November 2014 – Page 4 – What Was Pebble Mill?

Philip Donnellan retires

This article from the Pebble Mill News from 1984, lists some ‘comings and goings’ at BBC Pebble Mill.

Included in the ‘goings’ is radio and television producer, Philip Donnellan. Philip joined BBC Birmingham in 1948, and his retirement was beginning with a filming trip in the USA, and the promise of being able ‘to make all the films I wasn’t allowed to in the BBC!’

Other notable ‘goings’ include Stan Smith from Comms, Technical Manager Barry Hill, cleaners Maud Joyce and Gwen Carr.

Amongst the new faces were trainee cameramen, Simon Bennett and John Moorcroft, engineer Steve May, Top Gear researcher Jon Bentley (now of the Gadget Show), and dresser Terry Powell.

Liz Darby, Bob Jacobs are also congratulated on their attachments.

Thanks to Robin Sunderland for sharing the Pebble Mill News.

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

Laura McNeill: ‘That is brilliant! I trained with David Page at Wood Norton, the audio trainee.’

Stuart Gandy: ‘Many names I remember here and some I have worked with over the years.
Dave Bushell seeing your name there reminded me that it’s 35 years last month since I joined the BBC and you were my course lecturer!’

Dave Bushell: ‘Yes, Stuart, you were one of my early victims! Luckily you survived!’

Steve Dellow: ‘Lurking at the extreme bottom right (Anniversaries)…Clive Kendall (Comms) reaching 40 years service!’

Richard Stevenson: ‘Jon Bentley, Researcher Top Gear. Didn’t he do well?!’

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.

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

Gardeners’ World Live

This titles grab is from Gardeners’ World Live from the 1990s. Gardeners’ World Live was the television show from the annual gardening event of the same name; which is held at the NEC in mid June each year. The gardening exhibition is organised by Haymarket, who publish the BBC Gardeners’ World magazine. The television show is usually presented by a selection of the weekly Gardeners’ World presenters.

I produced this television show over several years, and used to really enjoy making it. We used to have a production office at the show, and then come back to Pebble Mill for the post production, and transmission. It was a quick turnaround, with the majority of the programme being recorded on the week of transmission, with a couple of video-taped inserts recorded in advance. I remember one year, where we realised about fifteen minutes before the transmission that we needed an extra piece of voice-over to make a particular junction work. I’ve never seen people move so fast, and everyone worked brilliantly as a team to find the presenter, write the script, lash together a mic, record the VO and insert it into the transmission tape – and we still made transmission! John Walton was the online VT editor that year, and did a fantastic job.

Thanks to Ian Collins for making the grab available.

Vanessa Jackson