Les Ross – What Was Pebble Mill?

Gyn Freeman and Nicky Steele, Radio WM

Photo by Rod Fawcett, no reproduction without permission

Co-presenters, Gyn Freeman and Nicky Steele in Area 2 of the Radio WM studio at Pebble Mill.

Thanks to Rod Fawcett for sharing the photo.

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

Gyn Freeman: Stuart Roper left, they brought Nicky to enable the station to still have a “double-header” – so I was the co-presenter of the show, as I was with Roper. Actually Nicky and I got on well together and the programme was popular but no way would either of these chaps let me drive the programme unless they took a break or I was doing the phone-in. Just to say that I am feeling just fine, but of course both Stuart and Nicky died so young. I did a double header on Radio 4 for a couple of series, the other presenter was Peter Purves, looking good and even older than me and the producer Peter Everett.’

Tim Manning: ‘If you look through the window, you’ll see that I was the producer, although not for the whole time that they worked together on air.’

Tim Beech: ‘Area 2. John Taynton always used that one for the shared evening show across the Midlands. Ed was always in 5, “driven” from Area 4. As was Tony Butler.’

Anthony Worrall: ‘I remember Nicky’s discos at Honiley Boot before his radio days!’

Gary Hudson: ‘I remember Nicky presenting gigs at Birmingham Town Hall in the 70s. He was already a star of BRMB, and – a day after the sad death of Ed Doolan – that’s a reminder that the commercial lot created all the major local radio personalities in those days – certainly in the West Midlands. Tony Butler was another contemporary, and of course Les Ross, who’d left Radio Birmingham for the glamour of the former Aston Hippodrome.’

Steve Jarvis: ‘I remember Nick when he was Nick Aire at Bishop Vesey School. He had the mot remarkable ten pin bowling style!’

Tim Beech: ‘Nicky of course sadly passed away many years ago – I just checked the date and it was 2001. Hard to believe it was that long ago.’

Chris Rolinson: ‘He was due to start at Saga in 2001, but he was already very ill and sadly died before we went on air.

He was slated to present the Saturday Afternoon show “The Saturday Alternative” from 2 till 6 and I had to sit in for him from launch.

It was very strange especially doing the first show that I knew a Midlands legend was due to present.

I hope I didn’t let him down…’

Pete Simpkin broadcasts on BRMB

Pebble Mill News, March 1984

This article about Radio WM prodcuer/presenter Pete Simpkin broadcasting on BRMB, is from Pebble Mill News March 1984.

Thanks to Robin Sunderland for making the cutting available.

Pete Simpkin added the following comment on the Pebble Mill Facebook page:

‘I remember it clearly!! BT had started what today would be an early attempt at social communications,by dialling a number you could get groups of people together but I was totally unprepared when l dialled it to find Les on his parallel BRMB breakfast show on the same lime!’

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