Category: Building

The Pebble Mill Building

Top Gear safety item – photos from Andy Woodhouse

The photos are from a Top Gear shoot about potential damage to a person’s head if involved in a high speed accident when not wearing a seat belt. The melon seen on some of the pictures was, medical specialists said, a good representation of the human skull. This segment used a high-speed film camera, with the principal photographer being John Williams, and Nigel Davey operating the camera. The item was recorded in the grounds of Pebble Mill.

Photos by Andy Woodhouse, no reproduction without permission.


Picture shows a rehearsal for capturing the moving head/melon. John Williams is second from left, Nigel Davey on camera.


Picture shows the fall of the melon from a two storey roof being recorded. Note the use of the coat to ensure the same melon could be used throughout until allowed to hit the ground.

Picture shows a discussion about the shoot process. John Williams is second from left, Keith Ackrill is fourth from left

Picture illustrates the impact of the melon on a hard object!

Pebble Mill at One – last episode, 1986

photo by Mel Stevens, no reproduction without permission

 

This photo of the last episode of Pebble Mill at One in 1986, features left to right: TV chef Michael Smith pouring the champagne; Magnus Magnusson; Josephine Buchan; Paul Coia; Jan Leeming; Marian Foster; David Seymour; John Eley (the Cooking Canon); David Freeman (from Radio Oxford); and Bob Langley. The floor manager in the foreground is Debbie Hood.

 

 

 

 

Showaddywaddy

Photos by Bhasker Solanki, no reproduction without permission

These photos by cameraman Bhasker Solanki are from a Showaddywaddy performance at BBC Pebble Mill.

The camera operator in the lower photo is the late Bob Hubbard, and seated next to him is Robin Sunderland, also a camera operator, probably then an assistant.

Robin has kept the hat safe all these years, and here he is with it in 2021.

Pebble Mill Blue Plaque

 

On Wednesday 8 September 2021 a BBC Heritage Trail blue plaque was unveiled on the site of BBC Pebble Mill, now a rehabilitation hospital, to commemorate the building and all the fantastic programmes that were created there. A small number of former BBC staff attended the ceremony. The plaque was unveiled by Midlands Today presenter, Nick Owen, who presented the last ever news programme from the broadcast centre.

Included in the photographs are:

  1. Annie Gumbley Williams, Jim Dumighan
  2. ?, Nick Owen
  3. Ken Pollack, Nick Owen
  4. Ken Pollack, Ivor Williams, John Duckmanton
  5. Norman McLeod, John Williams, Nick Owen
  6. Annie Gumbley Williams, Nick Owen, Jenny Brewer

John Holmes’s memories of working at Pebble Mill

John Holmes

I was fortunate enough to work at Pebble Mill during those heady days of regional TV when we had the luxury of not only ‘Midlands Today’ but two half hour opt-outs a week, Tuesday evenings and Friday nights.

That legendary producer Roger Casstles was the first to ask me to join the ‘Look! Hear!’ team as a presenter alongside Chris Phipps and Michael Woods. After the first series Michael left and Toyah Wilcox replaced him. At one time the programme was so popular we were receiving over 600 letters a week.

As a result John Clarke, another legend, asked me to present a new hobbies based series called ‘Sparetime’. The moment I saw the opening credits that Anne Jenkins had created I knew we were on to another winner.

The ground breaking programme ‘Together’ followed this. Ground breaking at the time because it focussed on the lives of communities that had settled in our region. The programmes objective was to bring us all closer together. I well remember the Sikhs of Coventry, the Muslims in Stoke, the Irish in Leicester and the Caribbean community in Handsworth, an OB.

If you have memories of this please contact me. They were halcyon days at The Mill.

I’ve written about it all in my autobiography, ‘This Is the BBC Holmes Service’.

For more details visit johnholmes.co.uk