Nick Owen – Page 3 – What Was Pebble Mill?

Good Morning in Berlin

‘Good Morning with Anne and Nick’ did a live outside broadcast from Berlin, to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in Nov 1994. The show was transmitted from the Radisson Hotel in Berlin. The presenters included Anne Diamond, Nick Owen, Will Hanrahan, Tania Bryer, and Jeni Barnett.

The photos include: Sue Robinson, Sangeeta Modha, Katie Wright, Will Hanrahan, Nick Owen, Nick Thorogood, Marco, Steve Pierson.

The furniture for the broadcast was delivered to the hotel – but it was flat-packed, which meant that the first job was to literally build the set!

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

Conal O’Donnell: ‘The Doolan programme did a show out of the former GDR studios in Liepzig a year after the wall came down .Strangely we still had a sort of old style communist minder with us who got terribly drunk over dinner & talked endlessly about the ghastliness of the fallen regime. Ashen faced & hung over the next morning he approached in tears begging us not to repeat anything he’d said the night before “it could ruin my career”(!)It was apparent that the old cultural cringe at saying anything remotely controversial was very much still there.Impressed too at our free wheeling ” anything goes” broadcasting style were the former GDR broadcasters who watched the show go out in some awe.A pleasant reminder of a time when the BBC was regarded as a free speech beacon to the world not a Saville style cess pit..’

Katie Wright (now Cooper): ‘God…memories! Yes it was the 5th Anniversary. The furniture arriving ‘flat’ was unbelievable but in the way of Pebble Mill folk, everyone just got on with building the stuff. I’m amazed it lasted the two hours…there were a lot of bits left over?! It was a great show with some very moving memories from Andrew Sachs. Then we all had to pile onto a rather ancient chartered aircraft to get back in time for the next day’s show……’

Good Morning with Anne and Nick Office

Photos by Sue Robinson, no reproduction without permission.

Sue Robinson (studio director) took these photos in the ‘Good Morning with Anne and Nick’ office. The office was in a portacabin at the side of the building, near the radio studios, and Pebble Mill garden. Pebble Mill was so full at the time that there was no available office space, and so the portacabins had to be bolted on the side. ‘Good Morning’ was a live mid morning magazine show presented by Anne Diamond and Nick Owen. It ran from 1992-6, and used Studio C, the foyer for the set.

The photos include reporter/presenter Will Hanrahan; head of newsdesk, Neil Morris; producer, Nick Thorogood; producer, Marjorie ?; assistant producer; Sue Walton; the practicals desk team; assistant producer, Shirley Thomas, Nick Kenton.

Children in Need Staff List

The document is a staff list from the 1999 regional opt team for the Children in Need evening show.

Note that the presenters included Michael Ball, alongside Midlands Today presenters: Nick Owen and Nina Nannar.

Thanks to Harvey Pope for making the list available.

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

Matthew Sly: ‘I was Pudsey Bear that year, we did the majority of it from Nat West in the Town Centre.
I was approached to be Pudsey when I worked in the Post room, and obviously was honoured, I remember that night very well indeed.

I remember how torturous the suit was, it had a fan in the head, but you couldn’t use it. I remember meeting a lot of Children while they were Auditioning for a Martine McCutcheon Video and almost passing out near the end.

I also remember H, Pete, Matt Wall and Matt Evans laughing their heads off when I first put the thing on:)’

Marie Phillips: ‘Matthew – whilst I was Co-ordinator we had strictest instructions that the suit should not be worn for more than twenty minutes at a time – a ten minute break with the head off and so on. You were lucky you didn’t suffer any ill effects. My long serving Pudsey was Charlotte Mayberry (spelling?) who did a brilliant job.’

Matthew Sly: ‘Very true Marie, I was also given the same instructions I must admit, I think I was just a bit of a wimp, the ladies that looked after me were absolutely lovely, to my shame I can’t remember their names anymore.

They also sent me a lovely letter after the night and I’ve also lost that, such a shame, it would have been my pride and joy.’

David Ackrill: ‘A friend of mine (Giles Herbert) who was an Engineer at Pebble Mill helped to organize the CiN special event station using the BBC Amateur Radio Club station located in the Pebble Mill building one year and I have a “QSL” card for a CW (Morse code) contact with the station on 144MHz somewhere in my files.’

BBC Radio Birmingham leaflet

Thanks to Radio Birmingham Producer and Presenter, Pete Simpkin for making this leaflet available.

The leaflet probably dates from the early 1970s, and details the community involvement of the radio station, and the programmes which came out of it. Note that Nick Owen is listed as sports presenter!

As Pete Simpkin says, ‘Can’t believe we did so much with so little funds! A terrific pioneering team with whom to work.’

Good Morning with Anne and Nick

Photo from Kathryn Shuttleworth, no reproduction without permission.

The photo of presenters Anne Diamond and Nick Owen was taken with a panoramic camera.

‘Good Morning with Anne and Nick’ was a daytime magazine show which was transmitted on BBC 1 from October 1992, until May 1996. It was a live show from Pebble Mill’s Studio C, the Foyer, which was previously used by ‘Pebble Mill at One’. The show included a journalistic top story of the day, celebrity interviews, as well as cookery, medical, veterinary, gardening, fashion and interiors items. There were also video strands, such as ‘The Library of Romance’, a Mills and Boon type mini soap, with a different story each week.

Kathryn Shuttleworth worked on the audio of the show.