Gosta Green – Page 7 – What Was Pebble Mill?

Derek Smith Obituary

(Photos from Jim Knights, of the regional Top Gear show, somewhere in Europe, no reproduction without permission)

(The following obituary for director, Derek Smith, has been written by his son, Graham Smith).

Derek Smith joined the BBC in Birmingham 1957, working as an assistant producer on the newly created Farming magazine programme. He worked at Gosta Green studios and Carpenter Road.
In the early 1960s he moved on to general programming, as director and producer. He made a number of films about the armed services, including Soldier In The Sun, a film looking at the Royal Anglian Regiment in Aden and Yemen (1964) (The film can viewed on BBC Four Army Collection and i-Player). Singapore Twilight (1965), The Last Outpost, (1965); Men Of Action, (1966); They Speak The Language Anyway (life at a US Air Force base.) (1967).
From the Pebble Mill studios in Birmingham, he made a number of single network documentaries. For The Flight Deck Story, the history of the aircraft carrier, he filmed on board both HMS Eagle and on USS Enterprise off the coast of Vietnam. The film was narrated by actor Kenneth More. (BBC1, Tuesday Documentary 1969)
Mission To Hell followed the Bishop of Birmingham, Leonard Wilson, returning to Singapore to tell his story of war time imprisonment by the Japanese. In the film, he met his former torturer. (BBC 2 1969)
Another military history film Derek made at this time was Jump Jet, the history of the Hawker Harrier. (BBC 1 1970).
A film for the series “The World About Us”, The Lost River Of Gaping Gill showed cavers Sid Perou, Mike Wooding and Tom Brown as they sought to discover the route of an underground river in the Yorkshire Dales. (BBC 2 1970)
Journey Through Summer was a series of six films with actor and writer P.J. Kavanagh, as he viewed Britain through long distance walks. (1974)
Four In Hand was a one-off film with HRH Duke of Edinburgh, demonstrating Carriage Driving. (1974)
A studio based programme Derek devised was Major Minor, a piano competition for 10-13 year-olds. A BBC Midlands programme, repeated on the network, it ran for three seasons and was presented by musician Steve Race.
In 1975, Derek returned to military matters with Return To Dunkirk. On the 35th. anniversary of the evacuation, the film told the story of the men who escaped from a massacre at Esquelbecq. (BBC 2 1975)
Just A Year was a film that followed three of the survivors of the Birmingham pub bombs in November 1974, on their long recovery from injury. (BBC 2 1976)
In March 1977, Derek created a new series for BBC Midlands, Top Gear. The programme ran for nine monthly episodes shown only in the Midlands region. It was presented by Angela Rippon with Tom Coyne. The following year, it became a network show, on BBC 2. Derek continued as series producer until 1986.
An original programme devised by Derek was Now Get Out Of That. It was a competition between two teams testing their survival abilities along with problem solving mental tests over two days. It was filmed on location, with documentary film crews on 16mm. The first two seasons used teams from Cambridge and Oxford Universities, while series three and four were a contest between Britain and the USA. The programmes spanned 1981-84.
After leaving the BBC, Derek spent two years in Saudi Arabia working as a programme controller. He then lived in Spain for five years before returning to Sutton Coldfield. Well into his 70s, he continued to work part-time, as historian on tours to the sites of the Normandy Landings.

Derek Smith. April 16, 1927 – March 17, 2015.

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

Murray Clarke: ‘A very talented director – never afraid to stick his neck out and make interesting programme that really entertained. Yes, I was there with him at the birth of Top Gear in 1977. Love and condolences to his family.’

Conal O’Donnell: ‘A marvellous tribute to the kind of person who made the BBC & pebble Mill ..’

Pinto at Pebble Mill – Prospero Dec 2013

This article by costume designer, Joyce Hawkins, appeared in the BBC retirees magazine, Prospero, in December 2013.

Studio Operations (part 10) Conditions of Service – Ray Lee

Conditions of service

A quirk of the conditions of service at that time, was the ability to take overtime as time in lieu, so that if you worked an hour’s overtime which would normally be payable at 1.25 T you could take the 1T as time in lieu, and just be paid the 0.25T. I made quite extensive use of that option when I was not short of money, as one cannot be taxed on time in lieu, but later with a growing family money became quite important. However I cannot compare to the master of the system Elson Godbolt. As he was part of the O.B. rotation he tended to get a lot more overtime than I did based largely in the studio, and he managed to amass weeks of leave, and around every 2 years, put this together with his annual leave and PHL leave, and took 3 months off during the winter season, on full pay. It was a good job no-one else wanted much leave at that time or it would have broken the system. If all the staff had taken all overtime as time in lieu, there would not have been enough staff to cover all the requirements, as no-one would ever have been working for more than their basic hours in any one year, and the staffing levels were such that some overtime was almost inevitable, especially as some studio sessions would overrun.

Other payments included extra payment if you worked on a public holiday, 2T for working on Christmas day, payments for working over 12 hours, payment for a less than 10 hour break between duties. All of these were intended to discourage scheduling staff for unreasonable duties, but for occasions like Election Night, where staff quite often ended up working though for 24hours at some O.B. sites, they were laughing all the way to the bank!

The engineering staff both in operations unit, and engineering services, were (as far as I am aware) all on irregular hours working conditions, which attracted a 15% lift on basic salary. In some areas many of the staff worked quite regular shift patterns and some even worked days patterns, but to maintain flexibility in moving staff around all were given the same irregular hours conditions. This may have caused some disquiet among some staff they worked alongside who were on normal days conditions and therefore flat rate salary, but I was never aware of it becoming an issue, it was just seen a a quirk of the system. The downside was that non of these extra payments counted towards pensions, so people used to receiving a lot of them, could, on retirement, see quite a cut in their income. From what I have seen since leaving the BBC, pensions have got a whole lot worse!

Ray Lee

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

Stuart Gandy: ‘Commenting on Ray’s mention of Elson Godbolt, I do remember that in my first weeks at pebble Mill at the start of 1980, I wondered who he was. By the time I had been there a few weeks I had probably met all the ops engineers except Elson. His name being on the rota as showing weeks and weeks of leave. Other allowances I remember back then were the MHW, or meal hour work-through. This was when you could get an extra payment if your meal time was disturbed. Then there was the sssa, soft soul shoe allowance which was meant to pay for footwear for people who had to walk on the studio floor. I think this was the massive sum of £4 when I started, and as far as I know, didn’t increase at all right up until it was abolished. It was quite a time consuming task though, filling in all the forms if you wanted to claim these things.’

Peter Poole: ‘And don’t forget meals over five at base. It was a small allowance with a luncheon voucher.’

Brian Johnson: ‘Wow, Elson Godbolt stirred a memory. Sorry this might be slightly off subject………however……When I transferred from London to my home town of Birmingham as a Technical Assistant in 1969, (pre-P.Mill) I had to do a few weeks in every engineering section. One of those was the film processing area at Gosta Green that dealt with all the News film each day. It was an unusually hot summer and we could not get the processing tanks down to the right temperature. I was being supervised by Elson and we had to buy in lots of ice to put into the huge tanks of developer and fixer to enable us to process the film. Midlands Today (I think it was called that then although I might be wrong) sent a camera crew to film us doing it and it went out on the news programme as part of the item on the unusual heat. We obviously managed to develop it ok!’

Pete Simpkin: ‘Brian as a former worker in News film processing in the BBC I can sympathise…we also had an annual maintenance weekend where we stripped the processor down and cleaned every tank and roller having to get it all up and working again by 9am Monday. Informal arrangements were made to cover any emergencies by having film processed at the local ITV studios should the need arise…it never did!’

Barrie Edgar 1919-2012

Barrie Edgar in July 2010

Barrie Edgar sadly died recently aged 93.

Barrie was closely associated with BBC Birmingham since the very early days of radio broadcasting in the city. His father, Percy Edgar was a Birmingham concert manager who was asked to start up broadcasting in Birmingham in 1922, by the chief engineer of the G.E.C. works in Witton, which was part of the British Broadcasting Company. He supplied artists, and produced programmes. Barrie’s reaction as a young child to a story called ‘Spick and Span’ was apparently the inspiration for establishing the first ‘Children’s Hour’ broadcast, which was years ahead of the BBC in London, and produced by Percy. Barrie made his first broadcast at the age of 14, playing Tom Brown in a radio adaptation of Tom Brown’s School Days.

Barrie started working in television in 1946, when he was demobilised after the war, and in 1951 he came back to Birmingham as a television outside broadcast producer. The O.B. unit was shared with BBC Manchester. The first programme he produced was an amateur boxing contest at Gosta Green, the same building which became the BBC Gosta Green Television Studio in 1955. Barrie was based at the new Broadcasting House, in Carpenter Road in Edgbaston, which was where most programmes were made until the move to Pebble Mill in 1971. Barrie produced programmes such as ‘Gardening Club’, which became ‘Gardeners’ World’, ‘Farming’ and ‘Come Dancing’. He also produced the ‘Kings College Christmas Carols’, ‘Songs of Praise’, as well as events like General Elections, and the consecration of Coventry Cathedral.

Barrie retired from television in 1979. Barrie’s son is the playwright, David Edgar.

The following comments were added on the Pebble Mill Facebook Group:

Keith Brook: ‘Dear Barrie. Lovely man. Cool, calm and collected. That’s how directors and producers handle themselves when they understand the business. ‘

Gordon Astley: ‘Barrie was a mate of my dad, Pat Astley…and got me an interview for the Beeb via the back door. He looked after me for the first few months of a career that lasted 40 years. Lovely man.’

Pete Simpkin: ‘Wonderful broadcasting practitioner the like of which has gone for ever. I really enjoyed interviewing such a terrifically talented man on Radio Birmingham/WM and also remember him taking charge of the garden at Pebble Mill….how many retired producers of standing would do that?’

Lynda Kettle: ‘An extremely wonderful gentleman!’

Tour of Gosta Green studios

Thanks to Bill Jenkin for making the video available.

This video is amateur footage from a visit to the BBC Studios at Gosta Green in the mid sixties.

Pete Simpkin added the following information on the Pebble Mill Facebook Group:

“Wonderful to see the old Grams and the Pye Monitors………even the rewinding bench near the TK. What memories. After the TV moved out Radio Birmingham sometimes used the studio for audience attended Classical Music broadcasts. Classical music on Local Radio…now that IS going back some distance!!”

BBC Gosta Green Studios