Television – Page 214 – What Was Pebble Mill?

The Pamela Armstrong Show – photo by Maggy Whitehouse

Photo by Maggy Whitehouse, no reproduction without permission.

The photo is of the production office of the ‘Pamela Armstrong Show’, seated at the desk are Peta Newbold and Jane McLuskey. The series went out in 1986/7, after the end of ‘Pebble Mill at One’ in 1986.

The series producer was Juliet May, with Vanessa Whitburn (now the editor of the Archers) one of the producers.

Pamela Armstrong was an ITN news presenter between 1983-6, before joining the BBC, and presenting the breakfast news and ‘Pamela Armstrong’ from Pebble Mill. The show was a chat show with celebrity guests, going out on BBC 2 in the afternoons. It lasted about a year. Pamela Armstrong went on to present ‘Daytime Live’ in 1987, a lunchtime studio magazine show, from Studio C.

Stuart Gandy adds the following information: ‘This was the show that effectively replaced Pebble Mill at One, which had been very successful for over 15 years and a lot of people were sad to see it end. I seem to remember that at the time there was a general feeling that this new show was an attempt to ‘de Birminghamise’ the output from Pebble Mill. (allegedly to fit in with ideas from London). The show had blacked out windows that made the foyer like an inside studio so that the familiar view outside could not be seen. This together with the afternoon slot pulled in far less viewers. The daytime live show that followed it was a complete turn around going back to more like the Pebble Mill format and using every bit of the building to make the programme from. Us engineers had to come up with some novel ideas when the request came in to get facilities into the parts of Pebble Mill that were far from the studios!’

‘Pamela Armstrong’ was one of the first shows Mary Sanchez worked on in the production office, ‘ operating autocue on what looked like wide toilet paper on a magnifying glass. I remember making changes while on the air by cutting out/ tippexing/writing and cellotaping it back together onto the roll !! We went on the air at 4pm and due to v generous hospitality at lunchtime, alot of the guests were a bit worse for wear by the time they went on! Remember the Keith Floyd cookery slots and Fanny Craddock??!’

Run for the Lifeboat – photo from John Greening

Photo by John Greening, no reproduction without permission.

The photo is of the writer and director of ‘Run for the Lifeboat’, Douglas Livingstone.

‘Run for the Lifeboat’, was a Screen Two play, produced at Pebble Mill by Carol Parks. It was transmitted in 1988.

The BFI database describes the storyline:

“Set in a Welsh fishing village. Maggie arrives from London with her son Terry. They meet Gareth Jones, a member of of the local life-boat crew and a friendship develops, resulting in Maggie’s marriage to Gareth.”

The play starred Stacey Tendeter, David Burke, Constance Chapman, John Pickard, and Ross Livingstone (who I think was the writer and director, Douglas Livingstone’s son).

Alan Duxbury on horseback – Paul Taylor

Photo from Paul Taylor, no reproduction without permission.

I really can’t remember too much about the programme. I seem to think ‘The Long Ride’ was on the schedule, we followed two riders from the coast across the Kintyre Peninsular. Alan rode backwards at times when leading our contibutors…. I chose to walk alongside (eyelines don’t matter so much for sound !)

Paul Taylor (sound recordist)

(The photo from the mid 1990s is of cameraman Alan Duxbury, shooting on location in Scotland)

‘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.’

Regional TV Presentation Studio – Peter Poole

Photos by Peter Poole, no reproduction without permission. I took these photos in 2003. They show the self-opt presentation studio which was operated by the news reader. They could opt out of the network programme and switch all the Midlands transmitters to enable a regional news bulletin. With the increasing number of regional bulletins during the Breakfast programme a dedicated production gallery was installed. This freed the news reader from any equipment operation. The gallery enabled video reports to be played and was operated by the director. This area also housed the computer graphics equipment. This was used for the weather maps.

Peter Poole

Stuart Gandy adds the following information: ‘In 1991 there was a project to make the presentation studios in all the regions stereo and included a new self op desk that the presenters used in the studio itself. At Pebble Mill though it was decided to build a gallery for the pres studio as well, that could be used to direct the shorter bulletins from instead of using the main gallery, so needing less people. Hence this was built with a tiny budget. The far end of the gallery here was where the news paintbox was located that was used to produce at very short notice, the graphics for Midlands Today.’

Pete Simpkin remembers visiting the self opt desk: ‘I remember visiting the late David Stevens at work in the self op days and noticed he sat on phone directories as he was a little short to be correctly framed by the locked off camera.’

Mary Sanchez remembers working in the Regional news gallery, ‘ I remember gallery B very well- worked from there for years- vision mixing and directing Midlands Today and Midlands at Westminster etc … Many happy ( and lots of scary!) memories! Self opt desk at 6am – hilarious with carol , sheila and Mandy ….!!’

Roz Gower remembers, ‘the terrifying experience of directing and vision mixing Mids Today! Did the gallery really look that tatty? And the monitor stack looks positively Heath Robinson! But in spite of the gut wrenching nerves it was somehow all great fun.’