Copyright remains with the original holder, no reproduction without permission.
David Waine was Head of Building at BBC Pebble Mill from 1983, when he took over from Phil Sidey. The photo was taken in David’s office, and in the back of shot is a still of the famous Harrier landing at Pebble Mill, from ‘Pebble Mill at One’.
Photos by Ben Peissell and Tim Savage, no reproduction without permission.
The lower photo shows VT Editor, Leigh Sinclair in CM2.
CM2 was an outside broadcast truck based at BBC Pebble Mill. It normally had two cameras controlled from it, and was used to record programmes like ‘Gardeners’ World’, before portable single cameras became the norm in the mid 1980s.
Mike Bloore was a VT editor who worked on CM2:
‘There was no edit controller on CM2’s VTR’s. There was only a button to start both machines at the same time and trust to luck! On ‘Gardeners World’ we often did “roll back and mix” which involved playing back the last shot of the previously recorded sequence through the vision mixer allowing the vision mixer(the person) to mix through to the live camera of the next sequence to be shot while recording the whole event on the other VTR. This enabled mixes on location to be possible with only 2 VTR’s. Then someone invented pre-read but thats another story!’
Mike Bloore
1959 old Delicia Picture House
This press cutting shows the Delicia Picture House in 1959, which was one of the main BBC studios in Birmingham before the opening of BBC Pebble Mill in 1971.
The Gosta Green studios were where many early television studios were recorded.
Thanks to Gail Herbert for making the cutting available.
Gail Herbert meeting John Major
Prime Minister John Major visited Pebble Mill in the 1990s and appeared on Good Morning with Anne and Nick for a sofa chat. He is shown here meeting Gail Herbert, Chair of the BBC Club and P.A., outside the front of Pebble Mill Reception. Between Gail and John Major is David Wayne, the Head of Building.
You’ll notice that John Major has signed the photo for Gail, who was a supporter of his.
Princess Anne opens Pebble Mill
Princess Anne officially opened the BBC Pebble Mill building on 10th Nov 1971. The photo shows her being introduced to various members of staff in Studio A. The white haired man on the left is Dr Charles Hill (Chairman of BBC Governors) I think that it is David Rose (Head of Drama) who Princess Anne is talking to, 3rd from the right is Bob Gale (senior dresser).
Below is an invitation to the official lunch with Princess Anne.
Please add a comment if you can identify other people in the photos.
Thanks to Gail Herbert for making the photo and invitation available.
