From David Hughes

This is David’s retirement photo at Pebble Mill in 1990. Here he is flanked by John Eden-Eadon on the left, on the right John Holmes

From David Plaice

This is the end of Pebble Mill, now replaced by the BBC Mailbox centre.

I must admit, without being unkind to the very nice people who worked there, that when I was camera-ing in the early seventies, I couldn’t see the point of building Pebble Mill, nor Manchester.

Later I found out that both were built by a long-gone management to show that the BBC is regional. The fact that it left the then fairly recently completed(ish) Television Centre under-used came second to politics. It meant that programmes mostly made in London – Howard’s Way especially – had to load themselves up and drive up the motorway at great expense every week to have the studio parts made there. You should have heard the producer Gerry Glaister on the subject of wasted licence fees,and his budget, just to get “BBC Birmingham” written on the end of the show.

Pebble Mill was actually most famous for Pebble Mill at One, a lunchtime magazine programme. For some obscure reason it was never made in the perfectly good studio, but in reception, which meant they had to build another reception for the people to arrive in.

Thirty-odd years on, a different BBC management is building extensively in London – with a new raft of under-used buildings at White City. Television Centre stands mostly idle with it’s main diet of sit- coms etc made elsewhere in places not loaded down by mad accounting practices.