Category: Factual

Performer at Pebble Mill

Photo by Bhasker Solanki, no reproduction without permission

Harold Rich at the piano and John McCulloch on bass.

Colin Pierpoint added the following information on the Pebble Mill Facebook page:

Harold Rich was a great broadcaster, and a nice guy. I remember him in Studio 6 at Carpenter Road. He knew the Type A studio equipment so well that he was passing useful information in private back to the control cubicle, by putting on cans and speaking quietly into the piano mic. He knew that the SM (Dave Welsby) could reply on Transmission Talkback and nobody else would hear the conversation. That way he was talking about the vocalist, and suggesting how to improve her performance.

Countryfile shoot at cricket bat factory

Photo by Mel Stevens, no reproduction without permission

Photo by Mel Stevens, no reproduction without permission

Countryfile shoot at the Duncan Fearnley cricket bat factory in Worcester.

In the first photo, Jim Knights on camera, in a Magpie crew. Mick Murphy, who directed this film, has his back to the camera and PA Caroline Smith can be glimpsed in the back of shot. The film followed the journey of a cricket bat from willow wood, from Essex to Duncan Fearnley’s factory, to be turned into the final product.

In the second photo, Matt Gray on camera, Keith Conlon on sound, on his knees, Duncan Fearnley (cricket bat maker) in the red jumper.

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.

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