Studio C – What Was Pebble Mill?

Election night 2001 Studio C gallery

Stuart Gandy and Keith Knowles on Election night in 2001, in Studio C gallery, in the early hours waiting for the results to come in. In the first photo you can see the names of the locations of the various OBs on the monitors.

These photos were originally posted on Pebble Mill Engineers Facebook group.

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

Stuart Gandy: ‘I remember the night well. The console in front of us with all the switches on was a special bit of kit (known as Robespierre – and I can’t remember why) that was only fetched out on election nights, that provided extra comms between the regions. It had to be connected back to comms centre with a lot of cabling a few days prior, which took quite a bit of planning and effort, but Pebble Mill was a regional election hub, so needed to communicate with a lot of places.’

Pete Simpkin: ‘I presented two General Election results Radio programmes on WM along with some local council ones and really enjoyed the through the night experience….. total exhaustion afterwards! Ten pm till 6 am the next morning was some ‘on air’ stint!!’

Andy Walters: ‘I was at the ICC that night Engineering for Radio WM. I remember it being a very late (or early morning) finish.’

Studio C Galleries

Studio C sound desk, prior to the refurbishment at the end of the 1990s. Photo from Stuart Gandy, no reproduction without permission

Studio C sound desk prior to refurbishment

Refurbished sound desk in Studio C

Refurbished sound desk being removed when Studio C closed, with John Griffiths

Refurbished sound desk has been removed, as Studio C has closed

Studio C vision mixer

Vision mixer stripped out of the desk after Studio C closed

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These photos from Stuart Gandy show the Studio C galleries over time, from the 1990s to early 2000s. Studio C was where Pebble Mill at One, and Good Morning with Anne and Nick were broadcast from, as well as several other shows. The first two photos show the sound desk before the refurbishment, which took place in the late 1990s. The third photo is of the refurbished desk from the early 2000s, followed by photos of the desk being dismantled when the studio was closed. The last two photos show the Studio C vision mixer, and its removal, when the studio closed.

These photos were originally shared on the Pebble Mill Engineers Facebook group.

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Front Room mug

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Thanks to Jonathan Relf for sharing this mug from the series Front Room, which was presented by Jason Bradbury, who has gone on to find fame with the Gadget Show. It went out in 1999 on BBC Knowledge, which was one of the BBC’s first digital channels.

The series was recorded in Studio 1 (built as a radio studio). Studio C’s gallery was cross-wired to cover Studio 1.

Jonathan recalls that the show included, “the cutting edge of “new media” content. I can remember a segment involving the “Take Hart” gallery music too, but was internet related.” The show involved viewers sharing ideas via webcams, video diaries, online chat and email.

Jonathan thinks he was training as a lighting operator on the show, probably under the tutorship of Dave Bushell.

I seem to remember that Tony Steyger was the Exec and Caroline Jones the Series Producer, with Bob Davies as Studio Director.

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Good Morning – Hotline area

Photo by Karen Bond, no reproduction without permission.

This is the ‘Hotline’ area for Good Morning with Anne and Nick, the mid morning studio magazine show, which went out on BBC 1 between 1993-6.

Each day there was a phone-in on the subject of the day. Calls would come in to the ‘Hotline’, and then the contributors chosen would be called back to speak on the programme. The cameras would come into the ‘Hotline’ area to get a summary of the types of calls coming in. The ‘Hotline’ area was near Studio C, where the show went out, just across the corridor, near the Radio Studios.

Good Morning, Rwanda OB – Caroline Officer

Good Morning OB in Rwanda, Caroline Officer and Sue Robinson

Photo copyright Sue Robinson, no reproduction without permission.

The date was December 1994 which began with an appeal we launched on Good Morning in September 1994 in conjunction with Oxfam requesting our viewers to knit jumpers for the Rwandan refugee children who had been displaced just over the border in Goma, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) due to the horrific genocide in Rwanda between the Hutus and Tutsis that began exactly 20 years ago this week.

Within weeks we were inundated with jumpers, so it was decided that a team would go out to Goma in Eastern Zaire and broadcast the distribution of the jumpers live on a pre Christmas edition of the programme.

Will Hanrahan was the presenter, Sue the director and I was the producer. Jim Knights was our camera op and our engineers were lovely guys from the OB unit in London, I remember our lead engineer was called Chris.

There were no commercial flights to Goma, so for the recce Sue and I did with Chris we flew from a Kent RAF base on a Russian cargo plane, I remember being given some vodka on take off, there were no seats or seat belts and I slept on top of a large water pipe which was far more comfortable than an economy seat.

The Oxfam people in Goma were fantastic, as were the aid workers at the camps, Toby Porter, a very young emergency relief worker was hugely charismatic and we decided to use him to convey the appalling situation the children were in. Toby has continued to work for aid organisations and is now CEO of HelpAge International.

We returned to the UK and planned the broadcast for a week later.

By now we had at least 100,000 jumpers, so Oxfam arranged to fly them to Goma and we travelled with them on the same cargo plane, along with BBC news journalist Roger Hearing. For our OB engineer Chris, the challenge was building the portable satellite dish and finding a satellite to bounce off. We were lucky to have with us one of the very first satellite phones and this helped us contact an American satellite company who turned theirs towards us, it was amazing how rudimentary it was, but it worked.

I will never forget the first communication with Gallery C at Pebble Mill and clearly hearing Jane McLean in my ear as I was standing in the middle of Africa, one of those magical TV moments.

For the final link, the idea was to have all the children, about 800, wearing a jumper each and we had about 12 minutes to get them on, so we had lines of small children with their hands in the air as we rapidly worked down the line.

We’d also chosen a handful of knitters to join Anne and Nick in the studio and it was my job to ensure that the jumpers they had made were shown on the children for this final link. This connection between the donor and the recipient was another important moment. Such a simple thing as a jumper meant so much to these children and I have often thought of them in the intervening years. We stayed in touch with the aid workers for a while and did learn that quite a few of the children had been reunited with relatives.

I am very proud to have been part of this broadcast, on a personal level it was the most moving experience of my career.

Caroline Officer