Drama – Page 99 – What Was Pebble Mill?

All Creatures Great and Small – Maggie Thomas

Photos taken by make up artist Maggie Thomas, whilst on location with ‘All Creatures Great and Small’, in the Yorkshire Dales.

Paul Balmer – Memories of working at Pebble Mill

I worked at Pebble Mill for 17 years from 1974.

I initially worked as a sound guy on many of the continuing dramas including many Second City Firsts and Classic Serials.

I also worked developing the soundscapes for the BBC’s first stereo drama serial – Juliet Bravo.

As a musician I was the ‘off screen’ guitarist for Alison Steadman in ‘Nuts In May’ – Mike Leigh’s direction was “No! No, worse much WORSE!” (difficult for a trained classical guitarist). I was in the dubbing suite for ‘The Boys From The Blackstuff’.

Alan Platers ‘Curriculi Curricula’ was also a major undertaking – the first lightweight on location electronic drama also with stereo sound – ‘hand synced’ by Roger Guest and videoed on location at Birmingham University!

I stood next to the writer on the very first ‘All Creatures Great and Small’ as the horse produced copious manure and the props guys argued over whether poo was an action prop or litter?

I also wrote music for Pebble Mill at One films – McClouds Mysteries – re enacted ghost stories! – Great fun. I have VHS copies somewhere!

I became a radio producer for Radio 1/2/3 and 4 and eventually a TV director having moved to Television Centre writing and directing multi camera drama for BBC Schools TV.

At Pebble Mill In 1976 I had met Stephane Grappelli – the great violinist and wrote his biography, produced a 1 hour biog on Radio 2 and a two hour DVD which was nominated for a BAFTA in 2002.

I also directed the multi award winning ‘Africa I Remember’ – shot on location in Africa.

Pebble Mill was an amazing place to work – in the same day you could work on Radio 3, The Archers and the local news!

One day I staged a ZULU charge on the front lawn.

Faintly bizarre in hindsight! But truly wonderful.

I now work as a full time writer.

All the best

Paul Balmer,

Author ‘The Haynes Guitar Manuals’, Penguin Encyclopaedia of Music, Julian Bream etc

Poldark – from ‘Dishing the Dirt’ by Maggie Thomas (make up artist)

POLDARK

We were a large number of make-up personnel with such a lot of main actors as well as hordes of supporting artistes. So we were all booked into pubs in the area and our make-up room was in the main hotel/pub in Lostwithiel. They were such happy days. The cast were a great bunch of people and made the long hours of work very enjoyable, as well as being in the glorious Cornish countryside in spring. The massive scale set-ups on a popular series like Poldark come as close to feature films as it is possible to get for television. There are all the period carriages and people who own and usually drive them who have to be made-up with facial hair and tie-backs and costumes. This is a whole way of life for them and they are in constant demand. They spend their whole lives around film sets. Their skill in manoeuvring the huge horses and carts, wagons and carriages is spectacular, especially when they have to keep doing take after take and getting the animal and vehicle back on their marks to go again, involving the most intricate manoeuvring. I think there are very few people left who can take over such work.

When we returned to Pebble Mill to start preparing for studio, I found I was to be doing a 100-year make-up on one of the cast. Fortunately, she was an older actress, which gave me a good base to work with and in those days we always had time to have some practice make-up before the day; but the hour-long make-up, layering fine plastic especially made for ageing make-up and drying each layer with a hairdryer, is very unpleasant for the actress and then the removal at the end is almost worse.

When we started on the scenes in studio we had some extra characters who had not been used on film and one of these artistes was Christopher Biggins, who was playing the part of a very frisky ‘Reverend’ Ossie Whitworth, who was up to no good with one of the Fair Ladies in the story. We, of course, had no idea that he would eventually become a National Treasure in I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here, but even way back then his wonderful disposition shone out. He was the sunniest, most cheerful person and had the most uplifting effect on everyone around him. He is also a great entertainer and there was never a dull moment when Biggie was in the make-up room; he used to have us all crying with laughter. I was not surprised to see him overcome such ghastly challenges in the jungle and become chosen as The King by the whole country. It couldn’t happen to a nicer chap.

(from ‘Dishing the Dirt’ by Maggie Thomas available on Amazon authors on line)

Boys from the Blackstuff – photos from Make-up Artist Maggie Thomas

Continuity polaroids of Bernard Hill, playing Yosser, in Boys from the Blackstuff. Photos by Maggie Thomas, no reproduction without permission.

These photos are not to be reproduced without permission.

Boys from the Blackstuff was transmitted in 1982, and consisted of 5 x 55 min episodes. It was produced by Michael Wearing, directed by Philip Saville, and written by Alan Bleasdale. The cast included Bernard Hill as Yosser Hughes, Michael Angelis as Chrissie Todd, Peter Kerrigan as George Malone, and Julie Walters as Angie Todd, with Tom Georgeson as Dixie Dean and Alan Igbon as Loggo Lomond.

The series continued the original Black Stuff ‘Play for Today’ group of characters, and focussed on unemployment and poverty in Liverpool at the height of Thatcherism.

It was a particular challenge for make up artist Maggie Thomas, as Yosser (Bernard Hill) had a series of injuries which had to partially heal, before new injuries were added, making continuity difficult.

Save

The Deep Concern – Richard Callanan

The Deep Concern.

I directed four episodes of this six-parter and it was a memorable fiasco!

The problems I believe began with the series Gangsters which David Rose had produced the previous year. It had been very successful critically but had also drawn a lot of flak for the violence and for the portrayal of Birmingham as a gangster city. David felt that he had to rein in and chose to commission a conventional country house mystery serial and turned to his former colleague (and onetime Head of BBC Drama Series) Elwyn Jones to write it. Elwyn Jones was a master of television series writing with a long line of credits including Z Cars andSoftly Softly.

David offered the scripts to several high-flying Directors who all turned the job down. I was working at the time in the Regional Drama script department at Pebble Mill with Michael Wearing and Peter Ansorge. I was not a member of their staff but was “on attachment” from my post as producer/director at the Open University. I was there to gain experience and explore possible career paths. At the OU I had directed several studio based literary dramas but had no experience of popular television and very little experience of filming.

I feigned an interest in the scripts to David Rose and, without actually lying, I convinced him that I could do a good job directing them. It was typical of David’s adventurous approach that he took the risk of employing me, a complete novice in the field, rather than turning to an established director who would have doubtless done a competent job. If he could not have a rising star as a director, he would choose an unknown and live dangerously.

Once appointed, I set about working on the scripts with Michael Wearing. They were, frankly, dreadful. Full of cardboard cut-out characters, glib dialogue and unbelievable plot twists. There were whole boxes of misleading red herrings. The story centred on a group of international celebrities, all leaders in their field, who were brought together for a corporate conference in an English country estate. A dead body is found at the end of the first episode and I think there was a body per episode after that. I can’t remember who done it!

Elwyn Jones was extremely unwilling to do rewrites and provided only a few minor alterations in answer to our requests. Michael Wearing and myself arrived one day at his remote cottage in Wales for a script meeting. He opened the first bottle of fine claret at 10 am! He would not rewrite and he would not let us rewrite but he did let us cut. And we cut as much as we could. But despite stretching out the action to fill what had been cut we still under-ran. One episode (Ep 5, I think) was so short that it had to have a transmission slot which was a full five minutes shorter than planned.

The shoot was divided between location and studio and it would probably be a consensual feeling to describe it as “unpleasant”. As often happens with a bad script, the cast were embarrassed to be doing it and found scapegoats to blame for being there! The scapegoats included the catering and their fellow actors. I was far too inexperienced to deal with the egos that arose. Resentment built over the duration of the shoot; some actors were literally not talking to each other by the end of it.

And yet there was a group within the cast, philosophical and amused by their predicament, who could laugh about it and enjoy the experience despite the pain. I remember them all fondly.

Obviously the bosses in London didn’t like the series much and sat on it for several months before scheduling it in mid-summer. It got poor audience figures and was panned by the critics. Clive James reviewed it in The Observer and finished his review (I’m quoting from memory) “At the end of the first episode it is discovered that all the car keys have been stolen. So nobody can escape. Except us. Click.”

I’m sorry to say I have no photos from the shoot or any other souvenirs. I do remember The Birmingham Post taking photographs of our leading ladies (Katherine Schofield, Beth Porter, Yolande Bavan) on a vintage car.