Jim Rosenthal – What Was Pebble Mill?

Radio Birmingham Football Team

Thanks to Annie Gumbley-Williams for making this Radio Birmingham football team photo available.

Mick Murphy, Pete Simpkin and Jane Green have identified the following team members:

2nd from left, back row,Jim Rosenthal (ITV Sport), fourth from left is Denis Mcshane went on to become an MP, top right, Rick Thompson, Head of Regional Programmes, Midlands and Head of 9 O Clock News.

Bottom row, 1st left, Stuart Woodcock(?), 2nd left, Duncan Gibbons, third from left Roger Moody (early sports producer Radio B’ham went onto a satellite company afterwards), far right, Nick Owen.

Duncan Gibbons became a screenwriter in Hollywood. He died in the first high profile forest fires in California, a good few years ago, attempting to rescue his cat.

I think the photo dates from the mid 1970’s. If you can add information, or identify more of the players, please add a comment.

Radio Birmingham, Radio Car

The photo shows the Radio Birmingham, Radio Car. It probably dates from the mid 1970’s. The line up is made up of the station’s news team. According to producer/presenter Pete Simpkin, it includes (L to R): Chris Phipps,Stuart Woodcock, Nick Owen, Angela Jameson, Annie Gumbley, Jim Rosenthal, then the late Andy Roberts news producer, a newsroom Secretary who’s name escapes me,Roger Moody and Martin Henfield. Angela Jameson was the Newsroom Secretary and married to the Warks cricketer John Jameson. Martin Henfield went on to become News Editor Radio Birmingham, Roger Moody went to satellite TV.

Thanks to Annie Gumbley for making the photograph available.

Radio Birmingham Newsroom – photo from Annie Gumbley

The photo is of the Radio Birmingham Newsroom. It probably dates from 1974, judging by the calendar, phones and the haircuts! It includes: Peter Perks, Jim Rosenthal, Stuart Woodcock, Michael Woodhead and Bob Sinkinson.

Thanks to Annie Gumbley-Williams for making the photos available.

Birmingham producer/presenter Pete Simpkin adds the following comment:

“Fascinating picture because it shows just how similar Radio Newsrooms in those days were to newspaper office layouts………just phones and typewriters……….no sign of any technology……….any tape recorders and editing machines were hidden away behind pillars and in corners.
When the Newsroom moved upstairs under ten years later the whole design was more like what we now know as technology led with tape and recording facilities much more in evidence and visible…….there were cart machines in the duty editors workstation and there was even a dedicated broadcast studio in the newsroom.”

BBC Radio Birmingham – Blog by Nick Owen

I first worked at Pebble Mill in 1973 after I landed a job as a news producer on BBC Radio Birmingham, the forerunner of BBC WM. It was a case of third time lucky getting into the BBC, having failed twice in the previous months to get a job in the Midlands Today newsroom. I arrived from The Birmingham Post and was overwhelmed with all the technology! I was always hopeless with anything mechanical, so learning to work a tape recorder was terrifying, but I got the hang of it in the end and became pretty adept at editing too, with razor blades and tape etc! I was told I had a fairly boring voice so I had to work on my intonation, to try to sound a bit more interested, but I really felt I had found my vocation. In fact, I loved it. It wasn’t long before I read my first live bulletin – I was introduced on air by a young disc jockey called Les Ross, but I have no idea what happened to him!

Ultimately, I became Sports Producer, following my friend Jim Rosenthal, and that took me all over the country and Europe following the fortunes of our football teams. Up the corridor, of course, was the Midlands Today newsroom with such luminaries as Tom Coyne, Alan Towers, Geoffrey Green and Tony Francis ( whom I’d trained with long before I came to Birmingham). I remember one day Tom Coyne said hello to me in the gents and I was so thrilled I nearly had an accident.

I left in 1978 to join ATV but returned to Pebble Mill to present Good Morning with Anne and Nick in 1992. More about that some other time, but I have to say thanks to the BBC at Pebble Mill for giving me my first chance in television back in August 1977. They were doing a regional opt to herald the start of the football season, but Tony Francis, who would normally have been expected to front it, was away on holiday so they were clearly desperate and asked me! I co-hosted it with Peter Windows, then a familiar face on continuity, and our studio guest was someone who became a great friend Larry Canning, the former Aston Villa player, then well known as a reporter for Sport on Two. The show was produced by another long standing friend, Rob Kirk, now at Sky News.

Some very happy days!

Nick Owen