Angela Rippon presenting Top Gear

Copyright resides with the original holder, no reproduction without permission

Copyright resides with the original holder, no reproduction without permission

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is a screen grab of Angela Rippon presenting the first ever episode of the motoring magazine show, Top Gear, stood outside BBC Pebble Mill, from 1977. An excerpt of this episode is included in the following BBC show, Back in Time for the Weekend, episode 3, The 70s: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b071c07m/back-in-time-for-the-weekend-3-the-70s

Here is the Radio Times entry for an early episode of Top Gear, from July 1978, courtesy of the BBC Genome project: http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/53d7caaca2db42e9af4b102cb6bb061b. You’ll see from the text that the programme was much more consumer and safety conscious than the current iteration of Top Gear:

“Top Gear with Angela Rippon and Barrie Gill
Rippon on the Road
The big holiday rush begins this weekend and many drivers plan to travel through Friday night. How dangerous is this practice? What are the stress factors and what are the signs of fatigue? Angela finds out for herself by night driving to the West Country. Twenty people are killed and over 200 seriously injured each week yet these figures could be cut to one tenth if we used our seat belts. Should we leave it to persuasion or is compulsion the final answer?
Director PHIL FRANKLlN Producer DEREK SMITH BBC Birmingham

Tom Coyne RIP

copyright resides with the original holder, no reproduction without permission

Midlands Today presenters, 1977. Copyright resides with the original holder, no reproduction without permission

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Former Midlands Today presenter, Tom Coyne (back row, right, in the photo), sadly died over the 2015 Easter weekend, in the Wolverhampton Nursing Home, aged 84.

Tom joined the Midlands Today team when the show started in 1964, at its Broad Street studios, before the building of Pebble Mill. He presented over 4,000 editions of the regional news magazine programme by the time he left the series in 1980. This video is of Tom’s last appearance on Midlands Today, in October 2014:

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10152742761389761

Tom Coyne also presented on Pebble Mill at One in the 1970s, as well as Songs of Praise, Come Dancing, and was even one of the founding presenters on  Top Gear, with Angela Rippon in 1977.

Tom also appeared in the Radio 4 drama series, The Archers, for three years, as a Geordie gamekeeper called Gordon Armstrong.

An obituary for Tom Coyne is on the ATV Today website: http://www.atvtoday.co.uk/66995-coyne/.

Derek Smith Obituary

Pebble Mill Shoots 13

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Photos from Jim Knights, of the regional Top Gear show, somewhere in Europe, no reproduction without permission)

(The following obituary for director, Derek Smith, has been written by his son, Graham Smith).

Derek Smith joined the BBC in Birmingham 1957, working as an assistant producer on the newly created Farming magazine programme. He worked at Gosta Green studios and Carpenter Road.
In the early 1960s he moved on to general programming, as director and producer. He made a number of films about the armed services, including Soldier In The Sun, a film looking at the Royal Anglian Regiment in Aden and Yemen (1964) (The film can viewed on BBC Four Army Collection and i-Player). Singapore Twilight (1965), The Last Outpost, (1965); Men Of Action, (1966); They Speak The Language Anyway (life at a US Air Force base.) (1967).
From the Pebble Mill studios in Birmingham, he made a number of single network documentaries. For The Flight Deck Story, the history of the aircraft carrier, he filmed on board both HMS Eagle and on USS Enterprise off the coast of Vietnam. The film was narrated by actor Kenneth More. (BBC1, Tuesday Documentary 1969)
Mission To Hell followed the Bishop of Birmingham, Leonard Wilson, returning to Singapore to tell his story of war time imprisonment by the Japanese. In the film, he met his former torturer. (BBC 2 1969)
Another military history film Derek made at this time was Jump Jet, the history of the Hawker Harrier. (BBC 1 1970).
A film for the series “The World About Us”, The Lost River Of Gaping Gill showed cavers Sid Perou, Mike Wooding and Tom Brown as they sought to discover the route of an underground river in the Yorkshire Dales. (BBC 2 1970)
Journey Through Summer was a series of six films with actor and writer P.J. Kavanagh, as he viewed Britain through long distance walks. (1974)
Four In Hand was a one-off film with HRH Duke of Edinburgh, demonstrating Carriage Driving. (1974)
A studio based programme Derek devised was Major Minor, a piano competition for 10-13 year-olds. A BBC Midlands programme, repeated on the network, it ran for three seasons and was presented by musician Steve Race.
In 1975, Derek returned to military matters with Return To Dunkirk. On the 35th. anniversary of the evacuation, the film told the story of the men who escaped from a massacre at Esquelbecq. (BBC 2 1975)
Just A Year was a film that followed three of the survivors of the Birmingham pub bombs in November 1974, on their long recovery from injury. (BBC 2 1976)
In March 1977, Derek created a new series for BBC Midlands, Top Gear. The programme ran for nine monthly episodes shown only in the Midlands region. It was presented by Angela Rippon with Tom Coyne. The following year, it became a network show, on BBC 2. Derek continued as series producer until 1986.
An original programme devised by Derek was Now Get Out Of That. It was a competition between two teams testing their survival abilities along with problem solving mental tests over two days. It was filmed on location, with documentary film crews on 16mm. The first two seasons used teams from Cambridge and Oxford Universities, while series three and four were a contest between Britain and the USA. The programmes spanned 1981-84.
After leaving the BBC, Derek spent two years in Saudi Arabia working as a programme controller. He then lived in Spain for five years before returning to Sutton Coldfield. Well into his 70s, he continued to work part-time, as historian on tours to the sites of the Normandy Landings.

Derek Smith. April 16, 1927 – March 17, 2015.

Pebble Mill Shoots 16

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

Murray Clarke: ‘A very talented director – never afraid to stick his neck out and make interesting programme that really entertained. Yes, I was there with him at the birth of Top Gear in 1977. Love and condolences to his family.’

Conal O’Donnell: ‘A marvellous tribute to the kind of person who made the BBC & pebble Mill ..’

 

Top Gear titles grabs

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Copyright resides with the original holder, no reproduction without permission.

These title grabs are from one of BBC Pebble Mill’s longest running and most well known series – Top Gear. They date from the 1990s.

The series began as a monthly magazine show in 1977, and ran at Pebble Mill until 2001. It was fronted by a whole host of different presenters over the years, including Jeremy Clarkson, William Woollard, Noel Edmonds and Angela Rippon.

The colour schemes are all suitably macho, as are the design features!

Thanks to Ian Collins for sharing the stills.

The following comment was left on the Pebble Mill Facebook page:

Andy Bentley: ‘Sometimes the vehicles for the program were delivered to Pebble Mill and we kept the keys in the Security office. As space on the car park was at a premium we felt duty bound to re-park them of a night. Got to drive some fab motors.’

Gregory Hallsworth: ‘Standing next to the fax machine the day after Clarkson tore into the Vauxhall Vectra was very revealing!’

Videotape in the 70s (part 3) – Ray Lee


Photo by Tim Savage, no reproduction without permission

VT Expansion

Around 1975/6 VTC was created. A pair of AmpexVR1200 were installed into the new area, but because there were only sufficient lines on the Comms router at that time for one more VT they shared a single source and destination route, and one control line. When working with a studio or outside destination, they only saw whichever machine was switched to line, which meant that for programmes like Midlands Today, one machine could be cuing the next item, while one was playing, but normally it would need a brief return to another source so that the machine to line could be switched prior to playing the next item. I had a fairly extended period working in VT after VTC was created, and even did some training of others including Tim Savage. At that time Angela Ripon was the main presenter on “Top Gear” which was frequently edited in VTC.

Soon after that the IVC 9000 Slant track machine was installed in the former Telecine viewing room. More and more programmes were using VT and so any viewing of film material took place either in the viewing theatre run by Stan Treasurer, or in the Telecine cubicles themselves. The IVC 9000 used 2inch wide tape like the Quad machines, but recorded the tracks diagonally across the tape. The tape also ran at half the speed that the Quad machines used, so could accommodate longer continuous recordings.

It was slightly less noisy than the Quad machines and had a much quicker start up mode. (I believe it could be synchronous in 3 seconds instead of 10). This machine was used extensively by Pebble Mill at One, but because there was only ever one machine, it still required a Quad machine to do edits, and also any material that was on slant track format tapes, could only be played on that machine, which rather limited its usefulness. The idea of obtaining a second machine for an edit pair never materialised, as by this stage the Ampex VPR2 machines were starting to be installed in London, and subsequently at Pebble Mill, and these had the advantage of seeing pictures in still frame and shuttle mode, which enormously improved the location of edit points.

Ray Lee

Ray added this additional information on the Pebble Mill Facebook page: ‘VTC was equiped with VR1200s which Paul (Vanezis) is quite correct were older machines (than the VR2000s). Pebble Mill had them 2nd Hand I think ex London when they were just starting to install VPR2’s at TVC as far as I recall.’

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