Sue Robinson – Page 2 – What Was Pebble Mill?

Good Morning, Rwanda OB – Caroline Officer

Good Morning OB in Rwanda, Caroline Officer and Sue Robinson

Photo copyright Sue Robinson, no reproduction without permission.

The date was December 1994 which began with an appeal we launched on Good Morning in September 1994 in conjunction with Oxfam requesting our viewers to knit jumpers for the Rwandan refugee children who had been displaced just over the border in Goma, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) due to the horrific genocide in Rwanda between the Hutus and Tutsis that began exactly 20 years ago this week.

Within weeks we were inundated with jumpers, so it was decided that a team would go out to Goma in Eastern Zaire and broadcast the distribution of the jumpers live on a pre Christmas edition of the programme.

Will Hanrahan was the presenter, Sue the director and I was the producer. Jim Knights was our camera op and our engineers were lovely guys from the OB unit in London, I remember our lead engineer was called Chris.

There were no commercial flights to Goma, so for the recce Sue and I did with Chris we flew from a Kent RAF base on a Russian cargo plane, I remember being given some vodka on take off, there were no seats or seat belts and I slept on top of a large water pipe which was far more comfortable than an economy seat.

The Oxfam people in Goma were fantastic, as were the aid workers at the camps, Toby Porter, a very young emergency relief worker was hugely charismatic and we decided to use him to convey the appalling situation the children were in. Toby has continued to work for aid organisations and is now CEO of HelpAge International.

We returned to the UK and planned the broadcast for a week later.

By now we had at least 100,000 jumpers, so Oxfam arranged to fly them to Goma and we travelled with them on the same cargo plane, along with BBC news journalist Roger Hearing. For our OB engineer Chris, the challenge was building the portable satellite dish and finding a satellite to bounce off. We were lucky to have with us one of the very first satellite phones and this helped us contact an American satellite company who turned theirs towards us, it was amazing how rudimentary it was, but it worked.

I will never forget the first communication with Gallery C at Pebble Mill and clearly hearing Jane McLean in my ear as I was standing in the middle of Africa, one of those magical TV moments.

For the final link, the idea was to have all the children, about 800, wearing a jumper each and we had about 12 minutes to get them on, so we had lines of small children with their hands in the air as we rapidly worked down the line.

We’d also chosen a handful of knitters to join Anne and Nick in the studio and it was my job to ensure that the jumpers they had made were shown on the children for this final link. This connection between the donor and the recipient was another important moment. Such a simple thing as a jumper meant so much to these children and I have often thought of them in the intervening years. We stayed in touch with the aid workers for a while and did learn that quite a few of the children had been reunited with relatives.

I am very proud to have been part of this broadcast, on a personal level it was the most moving experience of my career.

Caroline Officer

Good Morning with Anne and Nick, in Rwanda

Good Morning OB in Rwanda, Caroline Officer and Sue Robinson

Rwanda OB crew with children

Rwandan OB crew setting up

Rwandan OB

Rwandan OB, with cameraman Jim Knights

These photos are of an outside broadcast that the BBC 1 morning magazine show, Good Morning with Anne and Nick, did in Rwanda, in the aftermath of the bitter civil war, December 1994.

Included in the first photo are Caroline Officer, and director, Sue Robinson. The cameraman was Jim Knights, from Magpie, seen by the white Land rover in one of the lower photos.

Pebble Mill Charity Parachute Jump

This photo was taken just before the Pebble Mill charity parachute jump, circa 1981.

Included are: Chris Goode (far left), Lesley Hope Stone (in yellow on left),John Priestley behind Lesley, then Trina Bond, Sue Robinson (in blue, first row standing), Wendy Mawson (next to Sue), Robin Sunderland (to the left and behind Sue), Brian Watkiss behind Robin, Phil Thickett (sunglasses at the back) Bob Cosford (glasses at the back), Nick Patten (in orange, wearing sunglasses, to right and behind Sue), Barrie Foster (blue suit, dark anorak), Dave Lowe (red suit, with beard), Andy Turley just behind Dave Lowe, next to Ian Fisher, Steve Mitchell (in khaki), Paul (?) Patterson to right of Steve, Merrick Simmonds (in blue, kneeling in front of Sue), Kevin Hudson (next but one to Merrick, blonde hair), Prakash photographer from Graphics (head in hands), Brian Bishop (blue jumpsuit, crouched on right).

Thanks to Sue Robinson, Kevin Lakin, Jane Mclean, Kevin Hudson for adding in the names.

Thanks to Dave Lowe for sharing the photo.

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

Sue Robinson: ‘I’ve got a newspaper cutting about this somewhere. We raised money for the RNLI, I think?’

Kevin Hudson: ‘The young lad behind Steve Mitchell is Brian Bishops son. I remember the day well, I was slightly off course landing, and was dragged through a pile of sheep sh…t. Oh happy days.’

Carol Churchill: ‘Steve and Brian scenic artists. I saw them all jump, lot of green faces that day.’

Susan Astle: ‘I watched them all too, with Carol, it was an amazing sight. Susie (Bancroft as was).’

Planning Department 1980

Photo by Peter Poole, no reproduction without permission.

Included in the photo are, left to right: Sue Robinson, Penny Brain, Bruce Martin.

This photo of the Planning Department at Pebble Mill dates from 1980, when Planning were on the 3rd floor. Sue Robinson went on to become a multicamera director on studio programmes like Pebble Mill at One. Bruce Martin was the manager of the department, which used to book studio, VT and outside broadcast crew. He always used to greet people with a ‘Hi, pal!’, whether you were male or female.

Margaret Thatcher on Good Morning Summer – Caroline Officer

Margaret Thatcher produced two autobiographies, ‘The Downing St Years’ and ‘The Path to Power’; it was this second book that brought her to Pebble Mill in June 1995 to be interviewed by Sarah Greene and Will Hanrahan round the kitchen table on Good Morning Summer. I booked her and had the responsibility of researching her and looking after her on the day.

Beforehand, the building had to be checked by plain clothes detectives and sniffer dogs because the IRA was still deemed a risk to her. We couldn’t give her a dressing room near the crush bar or in the basement, so we had to locate her in a room adjacent to the radio complex, which was re-decorated and dressed accordingly with oil paintings and sofas from the props store in Selly Oak, thanks to Julie Knee.

You didn’t mind when some guests arrived early, but she arrived at 9.30am, hair perfectly coiffured and in full make up, she required no time in hair and make-up. The thought of making small talk with Margaret Thatcher was daunting, particularly when your political views were diametrically opposite, but I somehow managed to get through the next two hours, at one point physically holding her back behind the doors in the radio complex, with her handbag on her elbow ready to go on, because she just wanted to get on with it.

The thing I will always remember was Sue Robinson, who was directing that day, calling down to say that I should warn her about the loud intro to the music number that followed directly after her interview. We had the Tribute to the Blues Brothers on and they were playing ‘Everybody Needs Somebody’ with a huge brass section and Sue couldn’t move her out of the interview area before they started. I began to explain the situation and then the film and then the type of music and then a list of the legends of soul who appeared in the film and I knew she didn’t have a clue what I was talking about.

I’ve actually found the 1995 interview on YouTube – here’s the link

Caroline Officer

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

Jane Mclean: ‘I did Good Morning Summer and don’t remember Her Maj being on! Hysterical you looking after her and Sue directing!! Got through half of it then found myself thinking of all the spoof Maggies. Don’t believe you found it on You Tube. Think you have your own copy….’

Sue Robinson: ‘I have NO memory of this! I obviously decided to erase it from my memory in case it gave me nightmares!’

Jean Thomas: ‘On her visit there was a request over the tannoy for a welcoming commitee in the foyer. I was somehow at the front thanx to the guys from the 7th floor. She had fierce looking security guys who came in first who stood in the front staring at us. You guessed she came in and headed straight for me. Cameras popping everyone watching, I wanted to dissapear. She was lovely………’

Caroline Officer: ‘Sue Robbo, you can’t remember this one?? And Jane, yes I probably do have a copy but I stupidly dumped all my Pebble Mill stuff on to a D3 tape before I scarpered to Ready Steady Cook.’

Andy Bentley: ‘I was on the roof during the visit with Police Marksmen so they could view the whole area.’

Raymond Lee: ‘Don’t remember the Good Morning visit, but do remember her at Pebble Mill during the Pebble Mill at One era. Sadly I can’t remember what year, but likely to be late seventies, or early eighties. She came with Dennis, and I remember them both being in the production gallery at one point in proceedings. It’s likely that it was before she had engendered much of a reputation.’

Sarah Dunning: ‘I can remember her visiting pebble mill, as when she was walking around the bottom quadrangle corridor we were weren’t allowed anywhere near her by the security guards incase anybody did anything untoward!!’