Studio A – Page 7 – What Was Pebble Mill?

Howards’ Way 30 years anniversary

Copyright resides with the original holder, no reproduction without permission. Thanks to Les Podraza for making the cast and crew photo available.

(This iPlayer link is to an item by South Today about the making of Howards’ Way)

The end of 1st September 2015 marked the 30 years anniversary of Howards’ Way, the sailing drama series, which was likened to a British version of the US drama Dallas.

The series was hosted at Pebble Mill, and recorded on location in Southampton, with some of the interiors being recorded in Studio A.

Here is the Radio Times synopsis for the first episode, courtesy of the BBC Genome project:

“A serial in 13 parts devised by GERARD GLAISTER and ALLAN PRIOR
Episode 1 written by JILL HYEM
‘I’m sorry, Jan … It may be selfish, but I intend to spend the rest of my working life doing something I want to do.’
Title music
SIMON MAY and LESLIE OSBORNE Film cameraman JOHN KENWAY Designer MYLES LANG
Script editor JOHN BRASON Director PENNANT ROBERTS Producer GERARD GLAISTER”

http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/14bd8b49c7524441b9e9a278e19e74d7

Thanks to Paul Burton for pointing out the anniversary, and the South Today piece.

The following comments were posted on the Pebble Mill Facebook page:

Dawn Trotman: ‘I think it is John Kenway yet it was John Willey who shot the first and second series.. I edited the first series with Nigel Pardoe-Matthews and the second on location with Sharon Pemberton and Lynne Hawkins..great fun.. We always knew it would be successful..It was our Dallas..’

Maggie Humphries: ‘Not John Kenway,, it’s Jimmy Monks, Grips who worked on the series.’

Lesley Weaver: ‘Maggie Humphries is right, it is the lovely freelance grip Jimmy Monks near left of camera and far right is David Evans a lovely freelance Camera operator. Can’t really work out who’s behind camera. I worked on the second series so I ought to remember. In the clip I remember Tony ‘O’ sparks from Lee North and Susie Peck is the designer talking about the costumes, lots of others I remember too.’

Telly Addicts titles grab

Thanks to Ian Collins for making this titles grab available.

Telly Addicts was a BBC1 early evening, game show about television presented by Noel Edmonds. It was first transmitted in 1985, and ended in 1998. John King was the Executive Producer, with producers including Tim Manning and Richard Lewis. It was recorded in Studio A.

The questions were about television programmes past and present, with the usual format being a clip followed by questions. There were usually two teams of four people each, with a tournament style of 16 teams, in 8 qualifying heats, being adopted from 1987-1996.

The following comments were left on the Pebble Mill Facebook page:

Denny Hodge: ‘Yes fond memories doing the warm up on the show.’

Jane Green: ‘Your warm ups were a treat to see Denny. Remember them well. I worked on this. Noel was a dream to look after. Helicopter arrived literally 5 minutes before rehearsals began and he had his clothes all ready and pressed and he’d be in studio on time. No fuss, no silly demands. Went to collect him from his dressing room once and found him standing on a chair waving a ‘brick’ around. It was a new thing called a mobile phone and he was trying to get a signal. His very beautiful new wife Helen turned up to rehearsals one evening to support him as his much loved dog had just died and he was so upset. She just walked in – I didn’t know who she was and was about to ask her to leave when someone explained…’

Andrew Langstone: ‘My friend Jennifer Kings (was Hassall) was a production secretary on Telly Addicts. Managed to get us some tickets for a few recordings.’

Malcolm Hickman: ‘Didn’t John King flog the rights to Noel Edmonds?’

Richard Stevenson: ‘The first show I worked on in 1997. Ironically I then went on to work with Noel on numerous Gotchas (65 I think), Noel’s House Party and some great worldwide trips for Noel’s Christmas Presents.’

Belinda Essex: ‘I used to do auto cue sometimes’

Gill Thompson: ‘I used to organise the audiences for this show, never had a problem filling seats was always a popular one!’

Sarah Dunning: ‘And the graphic designer was the brilliant Annie Jenkins!’

Jane Upston: ‘I remember recruiting for this programme (I was Jane Morgan then and worked in HR). I remember Nick Hurran too, the Director and Jennifer Hassell. Who was the PA?’

Richard Stevenson: ‘Trudi Stanton and Roger Sutton vision mixed I think. Can’t remember the PA but it will come to me!….Thea Harvey?’

Radio Outside Broadcast Truck

Photos taken by Martin Fenton in 2003, no reproduction without permission.

Radio Outside Broadcast truck, parked in what looks like the BBC Pebble Mill garage.

The following comments were added on the Pebble Mill Facebook page:

Paul B Read: ‘Ahhh the Type B…fond memories…..’

Keith Brook: ‘I’m only guessing, but if you look above the truck, it looks like studio sound proofing. Maybe it was in Studio A before they trashed it.’

Kurt Tarrach: ‘No that’s definitely the OB garage that’s one of my orange stickers on the trolley!!’

VTB Channel Record 1988

VTB ‘Channel Record’ 1988 from pebblemill on Vimeo.

The video is a bit of moving history, although it was shot mute for a music sequence. It shows VTB in 1988 doing a drama “channel record” from Studio A on a pair of 1” VPR2 machines. The programme is “Final Run” VTB1 is on the left, manned by series editor Steve Neilson, VTB2 is on the right manned by yours truly. Video drama on location was very much pioneered by Pebble Mill (“Blackstuff”) and it was practice that the recording engineer or editor would record both the studio and the location. The bottle of Bush Mills Whiskey suggests the studio was after our location shoot in Northern Ireland . The “main” recording would be on VTB1 and the “backing” on VTB2. This was a throw back to the days when VT recording was not that reliable and all studio recordings had a back-up in case of problems. The blank tapes were assemble edited from the studio allowing time code to be “time of tape” rather than “time of day “as was used in London. In the case of a drama series we used “multi-episodic” tapes which meant that we would change tapes to that of whichever episode was being recorded. So for a four episode series we would have four master and backing tapes being used at any one time. This saved a lot of time at the edit not having to change tapes, and relieved some of the inevitable boredom of awaiting rehearsals to turn into “takes”. The tape trolley had a four channel audio mixer in it for editing purposes, and if you wanted to add music at all during the edit, you had to order you vinyl disc from the library and have it transferred to ¼” tape in the transfer suite.

Colin Fearnley

Bollywood or Bust!

Bollywood or Bust! was a studio based Hindi film quiz, which ran on BBC 2 between 1994-6.

Sanjeev Bhaskar and Mo Dutta presented on the series, with Narendhra Morar the executive producer and Denis Gartside the series producer. David Millard was the director of some of the programmes.

Four contestants battled each week to win a holiday to Bombay (now Mumbai), and a trip to Bollywood.

Thanks to Ian Collins for sharing the titles grab.

The following comments were left on the Pebble Mill Facebook page:

David Millard: ‘David Millard produced and directed the first two series and found Mo Dutta who was the sole presenter – a fabulous show!!’

Maria Needle: ‘I worked on it and I remember several infamous David Millard quotes that I cannot post here!’

Terry Baker: ‘I was Narendhra Morar’s PA so remember this show well.’

Jean Palmer: ‘And I was unit manager for some of that time’

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