Pete Simpkin – Page 12 – What Was Pebble Mill?

Unique Sound & TV Base for B’ham 1962

This cutting is from the Wolverhampton Express and Star, May 14th 1962.

The article heralds the arrival of BBC Pebble Mill, ‘the only comprehensive broadcasting centre for television and sound that is being designed anywhere in the world’.

The building, designed by John Madin, is planned to open in 1965! In fact, Pebble Mill did not open until 1971!

New programmes are also revealed in the article, including a 20 minute local news programme to go out week nights at 6pm, as well as a six part drama-doc about smuggling, entitled The Net. The Archers was coming up for its 3,000th episode – and it is still going strong now!

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

Pete Simpkin: ‘Fascinating cutting! Incidentally at the end of the article there is mention of the 40th anniversary of the BBC in B’ham. For the 60th in 1982 Barry Lankester presented a detailed four part history of the BBC in the Midlands with many clips some of which had not been heard for thirty or forty years.’

Stuart Gandy: ‘Interesting too how it talks about the value of bringing departments together under one roof. The exact opposite of what happened when we moved to Mailbox.’

Remembrance Day – The Longest Silence

The season of Remembrance brings back a terrifying experience I had when attempting to relay live the Remembrance Day Service at Queen’s Square Wolverhampton in November 1985.

We had on Radio Birmingham/WM for several years taken on the mantle of broadcasting local services as an alternative to simply re-broadcasting Radio 4 from the cenotaph in London and the Wolverhampton event had special relevance that year as the town was celebrating its Millennium.

With due attention to detail I had carried out all the essential ‘recces’ including the parking of our vehicle, the site of a suitable commentary position for myself as commentator/producer and all the relevant permissions and local arrangements with the Council and the Police. An early harbinger of challenges to come was the fact that I was issued with a parking ticket whilst actually attending a Council/Police joint planning meeting!

However come the day and I was first on parade at 0730 and thought it advisable to make early use of the Public Convenience situated under Queen’s Square. There I encountered a council cleaner and mentioned in passing if he was giving the place an extra clean ahead of the special event to be held above. His answer bothered me slightly and is registered as harbinger number two ”What special event?” he offered “ I’ve not been informed”

Next to arrive was the OB vehicle, in this case the Radio Car towing a converted caravan which had been kitted out as a fully equipped Radio Mobile control room.

Slowly over the following hours somberly dressed council officials and ladies and gentlemen of military and religious bearing made their presence known as they took up their allotted positions. I climbed the scaffolding platform where stood the Rector who would be conducting the service and confirmed my on air starting cue to him, the raising of a freshly pressed white handkerchief from my position in the crowd.

Finally Transmission time. At precisely 1045 my colleague at Pebble Mill handed over ‘Live to Pete Simpkin at Queen’s Square Wolverhampton.’ By this time as I began for me this historic broadcast harbinger number three was already rearing its ugly head. You see by now the parade of Soldiers, Veterans and local dignitaries and accompanying Brass Band was still not drawn up in front of the Rector and Civic dignitaries on their scaffolding platform. They were about 100 yards down the hill still approaching the event. I immediately launched into my Dimbleby- inspired routine using up almost all my fact cards describing the event, the location, the Regimental details of the soldiers and the veterans and by nine minutes to eleven was almost reduced to describing the shop fronts when the parade swept into the square and formed up ready for the service leading to the Two minute’s silence at 11 o’clock. At this point, as I introduced the Rector and discretely waved my cue-ing handkerchief just two of of us in that square were under pressure. How, I wondered, would the Rector condense a fifteen minute service into what by now was eight minutes and how would I respond on air…or even should I …to the shortened order?

Magnificently the Rector managed to lead what amounted to ‘a story, a hymn and a prayer’ and finish a few seconds before the 11 o’clock maroons.

And so began the Silence, what turned out to be the longest two minutes of my life. A few seconds into this a re-assuring engineer’s voice whispered quietly into my headphones “Don’t panic Pete’. By now we were beyond harbingers of doom, we were here! “ Don’t panic Pete, the Radio car is on fire!” Looking back from this distance in time I can still feel the panic which this guidance was designed to allay was palpable. With all the smoothness I could muster I very slowly turned my head without disturbing the population of Wolverhampton surrounding me to see a gentle wisp of white smoke surrounding the Radio Car. As this minor incendiary event took hold the signal level of the ‘silence’ arriving at Pebble Mill decreased to such a point that the presenter on duty in the studio felt obliged to slowly up the gain control so that at least the atmosphere of the ‘silence’ was still audible on air. Events now took a frightenly rapid turn for the worse as one of the engineers found he could by-pass the smoking component and return the signal level at base to normal. This resulted in a sudden increase in signal in my headphones so great that I feared a bomb had gone off. I winced and frantically closed my eyes fearing the worst. I knew I would have to open them again and work out how to describe the expected carnage when I realised that all the sound was in my head and around me the good burgers of Wolverhampton were still observing their silence unaware of the chaos assaulting my head. Within seconds the closing Maroons were sounding, the buglers were playing the last post and, completely on auto pilot, I was summing up and handing back to the studio.

I cannot remember getting back to The Mill and trying to describe what had happened because of course apart from a sudden lurch in sound levels during the Observation of the Silence no-one else was aware of the events that had truly been just in my ears.

Oh, as a final reward the parking ticket was personally withdrawn by the Chief Constable.

Peter Simpkin

As a post script I recall that Radio Cars were often getting into trouble. This one caught fire again somewhere near Telford and Phil Horner who was driving it had to retreat a long way to the nearest motorway phone point to summon the AA. When asked the registration number he couldn’t remember it and when the AA asked how they could identify it he cooly said,” it’s big and white, signwritten BBC Radio and it’s on fire!”

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

Michael Fisher: ‘Might add a tale about the news version of the Radio Car, the Ford estate ‘Yellow Peril’ with (new technology!) bulky mobile phone fitted (not portable!!). I used it to travel to report on a soccer match in Carlisle (v Walsall) and on my return down the M6, smoke started appearing from under the bonnet! Turned out it had not been topped up with oil. Chief engineer Stuart not impressed with my driving skills…..’

Peter Poole:’Thanks Pete, an amazing story and you kept the show on air. Service beyond the call of duty!’

Lynn Cullimore: ‘Forever the professional Pete. A lovely story…I don’t think people ever realise just how good and professional presenters and production people are!’

Pete Simpkin: ‘Thanks Lynn, actually it only works for most because we have had such great teams behind us but on this occasion there was terrible loneliness for those two very long minutes!!’

1984 Spring and Summer line-up

This page from the 1984 Pebble Mill News, includes an article about David Waine’s press briefing about Pebble Mill’s output: 500 hours of network TV, 1,000 hours of network radio, and 160 hours of regional television. Highlights include a new Saturday night light entertainment show, new series of Top Gear, Kick Start and Top Sailing, as well as Now Get Out of That, Gardeners’ World, Asian Magazine, and Gharbar. On the drama front there is mention of The Groundling and the Kite, Phoebe, The Amazing Miss Estelle, and Morte d’Arthur.

Network Radio was also busy, with a new Radio 4 series of Enterprise, and Rollercoaster, as well as hosting a Schools Radio Festival hosted by Sue Lawley, Rolf Harris and Duncan Goodhew.

In regional television there were new series of, Midlands Sound and Midlands Tonight, and a television version of Malcolm Stent’s Radio WM series, In the Barmaid’s Arms.

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

Peter Poole: ‘I worked on The Barmaid’s Arms in Studio A. They had a good band called The Nightriders. This was before producer choice. After that regional TV could never afford Studio A.’

Pete Simpkin: ‘As producer of the Radio version of the Barmaids it was quite pleasant to be a member of the audience with the real beer and not have to worry about anything! I do remember that someone had crafted a tiny hole in the chest of Malc’s shirt to take the cable for his personal mic.’

Lynn Cullimore: ‘Yes, Peter it was Mike Sheridan and the Nightriders…I was the PA and I loved it. Malc was wonderful to work with and i did many programmes with him. Malcolm is still going too..doing shows and things. Mary someone or other did a brilliant set for it…cannot remember her other name but she was very good.’

Peter Poole: ‘Hi Lynn, it was great when regional TV could do shows like this. Do you remember who the producer was? Malcolm often did warm up for PM at One. He always did a great job entertaining the audience.’

Lynn Cullimore: ‘The Producer was John Clarke whom I worked with for a long time. I did many Studio A programmes at one time – do you remember The Garden Game?’

Stuart Gandy: ‘I do remember The Garden Game. Wasn’t it on during the Friday night opt slot? In those days regional programmes had two opt slots per week.’

Peter Poole: ‘I remember John he was great producer and a very nice man. It’s amazing the programmes produced on such small budgets. I didn’t work on The Garden Game but do remember it. One of the many panel shows in Studio A. I always enjoyed working on regional TV programmes. The production teams were lovely people.’

Film Sound Transfer Suite

Photos by Peter Poole, no reproduction without permission.

These photos are of the Film Sound Transfer Suite, G07, from the 1970s, at Pebble Mill. The machines in the lower photo are sep-mag recorders.

The following information was added on the Pebble Mill Facebook group:

Pete Simpkin: ‘Sep-mag was a boon to Regional TV news especially as it enabled proper independent editing of sound and picture at speed. The news stories were shot on cine film which had a magnetic coating along the edge onto which the location sound was recorded by the camera. After processing the magnetic strip, sound was transferred to separate magnetic film track, the same 16mm guage as the picture, and then the editors could drop in overlay shots whilst the sound was continuous on the sepmag. If there was time, dubbing and mixing of commentary and effects would be possible, but there was rarely time for this. As telecine operators, we had the challenge of ‘locking -up’ or synchronising the sepmag track and the picture film on the two machines for transmission. Time had to be built in to the programme running order for this to be achieved, but with things happening at speed, it was not unknown for the locking to fail and one of the reels could run wild and cause much mayhem! Happy days!’

Peter Poole: ‘Pete has described the sound process for regional TV news. Com-mag audio quality is only suitable for speech recording. Network and other regional TV progammes were shot on a crystal controlled film camera. The sound was recorded on a Nagra tape recorder. To ensure synchronization a pilot tone is recorded with the audio. In the transfer suite the pilot tone is synchronized and the audio is transfered to the Sep-Mag film. Sound transfer was originally carried out in the dubbing theatre record room. With the increasing film production this system became unable to cope. A dedicated transfer suite was set up in room G07. Pebble Mill was the first and probably the only one to buy PAG recorders. They were made in the UK and cheaper than the Perfecton recorders. The PAG machines had poor reliability. The breaks would often fail. Watching 2000 ft. of film being thrown across the room was not a good experience! They were eventually replaced by Perfecton machines.’

Andrew Godsall: ‘Those PAG machines had a meccano like quality about them. I turned up at Pebble Mill not long after GO7 was set up and it was just a conference room with equipment plugged directly together if I recall. It had domestic type cassette players and tape recorders as well as the PAG machines and a Nagra. But it was treated with respect and produced great results. Eventually the room was hard wired and connections appeared on a jackfield. It had a window on to the outside world and that could make it a good place to work.’

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!’