Pete Simpkin – Page 23 – What Was Pebble Mill?

Nagra – photos by Ian Collins

Photos by Ian Collins, no reproduction without permission.

Video editor Ian Collins took photos of various pieces of post-production technical kit before the fixtures and fittings of Pebble Mill were sold off in auction in Autumn 2004.

These photos are of a Nagra audio recorder. They were used in the PSC (portable single camera) edit suites until the 1990s. They were very rugged and reliable.

Please add a comment if you can add information about how the Nagras were used.

The following comment was made by recordist Murray Clarke about location Nagras: ‘Of course the Nagra 3 and 4s were the standard sound recording machine for location recordists for many many years before DAT became more common. I bought my mono Nagra 3 in 1971 for a cost of around £3200. I took it up to Yorkshire for a couple of episodes of all Creatures Great and Small – and it rained solidly for a fortnight!!!. My ‘over-qualified’ boom op and assistant was Dave Baumber, then the Dubbing Mixer at the newly-built Pebble Mill studios.’

Christopher Hall adds the following information: ‘This is a Nagra T. T for twin capstan. They had a computer controlled synchroniser which could chase timecode from the VT machine in an edit suite at high speed. I went on a factory course for these in the late 1980s. We spent a whole day learning how to repair the motors, and when we asked how long they usually lasted for a discussion in French and German revealed that they didn’t know because none had stopped yet!’

Paul Vanezis: ‘I tracklayed 10 episodes of ‘Chalkface’ and 8 episodes of ‘Specials’ on a Nagra T…’

Peter Poole: ‘This must be the finest tape recorder ever made. I spent ages trying to get film unit to buy one for the transfer suite. It never happened. But after seeing the price I could see why!’

Pete Simpkin: ‘Totally agree with you Peter……I used one to great effect recording a nightingale for a Radio Birmingham programme in the 70s. The standard reporter’s Uher was not up to the job and the simple version Nagra gave level control, mixing of two mics AND ‘off tape’ monitoring!’

David Stevens, Midlands Today and the self opt

This blog is made up from comments from various contributors on the Pebble Mill Facebook page.

‘David was one of a team of Announcers who in the 70s became both TV and Radio broadcasters reading the radio and TV bulletins and also operating the local TV continuity desks. For a glorious time in the 70s all the Regions had one of these self operated desks, originally placed in the news studios but eventually in their own little cubby hole but using a studio camera wheeled into place after the regional news programme had finished. They shadowed the London announcers doing their own sound and vision mixing ……in vision…… and could call up captions, slides and even telecine. So the entire evening looked as if it were coming from Pebble Mill. The team consisted of David, Guy Thomas and others and seemed to be a great success.’ (Pete Simpkin)

‘David was always a delight to work with. Many years ago when BBC 1 closed down at the end of the day’s broadcast the Regions would opt out to say goodnight. David was famous for these opt outs and would often show photos from local photographic clubs. One time this opt out carried on after the other had Regions had closed down. The transmitters had a system called RBS. If the line feed failed, the RBS would rebroadcast an off signal, signal from the nearest transmitter. This resulted in all the transmitters switching back on and broadcasting David across the UK!’ (Peter Poole)

‘On the subject of RBS, assuming the tx’s of that era weren’t still being shut off manually at the end of the day (it’s quite possible that the main stations were still manned during operational hours in those days). It would likely be that only stations north of Sutton would carry this extended programme, as the RBS system was designed to work from London outwards it would be unlikely that any transmitters south of Birmingham would’ve stayed on as they would be RBSing from sites in the south, which would likely to have been fed from different regions. The network was strictly one way, a fully meshed configuration would have been a nightmare.’ (Andy Marriott)

‘As an engineer in the Communications Centre on the late shift, I would see David come in around 23:30 and load all his slides from local photographers into the slide scanner for his closedown news bulletin. Depending on how many slides he loaded determined how late we would have to stay!

We would do checks with him from the self op desk to make sure his mic and camera were working ok and then ‘opt him in’ (that is, change the route of BBC 1 Network (from London) from going directly to the transmitters to going via his self opt desk so that when he was cued via Network t/b, he could switch his own output to the transmitters instead of that from London Network)….sometimes there were a lot of slides!
When he had finished, we could put the Network feed back to the transmitters and go home.’ (Brian Johnson)

Contributions from Peter Poole, Pete Simpkin, Andy Marriott and Brian Johnson, and photo supplied by Annie Gumbley Williams

Radio Birmingham & WM, Christmas memories – Pete Simpkin

Here is a podcast from presenter and producer Pete Simpkin reminiscing on diverse experiences of working over Christmas on Radio Birmingham and Radio WM.

Andy Walters left the following comment on the Facebook page: ‘It’s not that much different today. This years WM Carol service was recorded last Monday. I have fond memories of being sat in what became known as Area 3 in Pebble Mill devouring Producers tins of sweets as they were bought in.’

Cartoons of Pete Simpkin – Radio Birmingham

‘Good Company’ OB to the Saddlers Centre

Rolf Harris cartoon of Pete

Yoga on the Radio

Radio Birmingham producer/presenter Pete Simpkin has three cartoons of himself from when he worked at Pebble Mill. The first relates to an OB he did for the Afternoon show ‘Good Company’, from the Saddlers Centre, Walsall. The second was drawn by Rolf Harris whilst Pete interviewed him, and the third is about the famous ‘Yoga by Radio’ which was pioneered on Radio Birmingham.

‘Angels’ – Janice Rider

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Specially shot interview with Janice Rider, about working as Costume Designer on the hospital soap, ‘Angels’. ‘Angels’ was a London production, hosted at BBC Pebble Mill. It ran from the mid 1970s until the early 1980s. Julia Smith, who went on to produce ‘Eastenders’, was the producer.

Pete Simpkin a producer and presenter from Radio WM remembers getting help from the ‘Angels’ cast: ‘When we relaunched Radio Birmingham two of the Angels’ actresses came with me to the old Moseley Maternity hospital to help publicise Radio WM’s first birth.’

Julian Hitchcock remembers ‘Angels’ well: ‘I worked on Angels from 1978 as a floor assistant and was very friendly with the cast and production team. I often wondered what became of them. In 2001, I was working as a lawyer for Granada factual programmes in Manchester, when I heard that my old friend, Kathryn Apanowicz was presenting a programme downstairs on a regular basis. We meant to meet up, but I was appointed to a firm in Melbourne and it never happened, which was such a pity.’