Changing women’s roles in production

How women’s roles within the BBC changed from pebblemill on Vimeo.

Specially recorded video with Steph Silk, talking about how women’s roles in production teams began to change in the later 1970s. The development of the researcher role was crucial in allowing women to progress up the career ladder in significant numbers. Steph was a researcher, assistant producer and then producer on the lunchtime magazine show, Pebble Mill at One.

Steph

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Pebble Mill Pantomime – from Annie Gumbley

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

This photo shows the cast of a pantomime performed by members of the Pebble Mill staff. The pantomime was the Pied Piper which was a BBC Drama Club production and the show was put on at Cadburys.

The photo includes Pat Wareham, Ann Gumbley, Susie ?, Wendy Nelson, Annie ?, Polly Brain, Elaine Hercombe, Jane Hyde, and Jayne Savage.

Thanks to Annie for making the photo available.

Jayne Savage (on the right with the long hair), remembers the club well:

“Drama Club productions were a regular thing – I would say annually during the early/mid 70s. The first one I can remember was a review which included tiller girls and a very energetic can can which was performed at the Crescent Theatre. Rather worryingly I don’t remember Pied Piper! The production that stands out for me was Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat which ran for several nights at Cadbury’s and then had 2 performances at Malvern. The final one I think was How to Succeed in Business… at the Old Rep. Rita Cashmore who choreographed was brilliant at organising a very ‘mixed’ collection of dancers. Anybody who wanted to take part could, and it was a lot of fun.”

Gail Herbert was also a keen Drama Club member:

“I used to be involved with some of these epics. I remember being the back end of the cow in Godspell – Peter Hercombe was at the front! We trod the boards at Malvern I seem to remember. Real laugh.”