Brenda Jeffcoat

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Brenda Jeffcoat passed away suddenly on Thursday 13th December, aged 89. She was in good spirits a few days before she died. There are several photos below of her from her Radio Birmingham days.

Here are a couple of memories of Brenda, one from Nick Owen who says he remembers Brenda well. “A lovely lady who was always friendly and chatty”.
Here is another memory from Bunny Hall of Brenda in the 1960s…….
“I was so sorry to hear about Brenda. Although I hadn’t seen her for many, many years she also played a large part in my BBC life. I knew her right from the early sixties when she used to stand in for Olive Burrows as the teleprinter operator in an office shared with myself and
Lily Such (we were the Duplicating office, but these days probably more pompously known as ‘Office Printing’) at Carpenter Road. We always got on very well and still kept in touch after I left in 1978.”

Thanks to Annie Gumbley-Williams for the information and photographs of Brenda.

Memories of Broad Street

Photo by Martin Fenton, no reproduction without permission. These audio tapes are from Radio Studio 3 at Pebble Mill.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I joined the BBC in Broad street as a Studio Manager in 1963 after about 3 months training in London, one of my first experiences was as Spot Effects S.M on The Archers. Tony Shryane -Producer- sat at the mixing desk, controlling the programme levels. There was a Studio Manager playing in Sound effects off 78rpm records and also from from recorded tapes- recorded originally on 5″ full track tapes @ 7.5″/sec. on an EMI Midget battery powered tape machine. These tapes were edited and compiled onto 10.5″ dia.tape reels of which at that time there were about 2 dozen. These were catalogued originally in a box file but later on fullscap sheets in a spring back folder.

Within a few months I moved on from pouring cups of ‘tea’, opening and closing doors etc to become the Gram and tape S.M. Agriculture was as ever becoming more developed and this meant more mechanisation and more recordings required. F.M radio was expanding and quality sound effects were also required to replace some of the original 78 rpm recordings.

Another S.M joined the Archers Team-Peter Belham- and between the two of us we increased the Tape library for the programme vastly ,and were recording in Stereo, looking to the future for not only The Archers but Birmingham Radio Drama output. This library of effects moved to Studio 3 at Pebble Mill, along with a Mini Archive of significant Archers episodes. Before this time Tony Shryane had asked me to take over at the Mixing Desk. Peter, was grams SM but also mixed from time to time but was also Mixing Radio Drama. We tended to swop roles back and forth as needed and I was quite often Grams S.M. when Peter was mixing a Radio Play. On Tony Shryanes retirement I felt it was time to move on from The Archers. Some years after both Peter and I had retired Mark Decker moved the effects library to the Mail Box and began the process of transferring it to C.D before his untimely death from cancer.

John Pierce

Pete Simpkin oral history

This is a specially recorded oral history interview with radio producer and presenter, Pete Simpkin, who worked on both Radio Birmingham and Radio WM at BBC Pebble Mill.

Radio Producer, Pete Simpkin.

Chris Phipps – Namedropper!

 

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

Chris Phipps’s autobiography, Namedropper, is available on Amazon priced at £9.99. It includes Chris’s memories of Pebble Mill.

Pope John Paul II, Souvenir Programme

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Radio WM covered the visit to the Midlands of Pope John Paul II in 1982. Radio WM engineer, Rod Fawcett, worked on the radio programme from Coventry, and kept the souvenir programme safe since then.