What Was Pebble Mill? – The stories from Pebble Mill, the BBC studios in the West Midlands

Nanny – Michael Custance, Part 3

It was the last episode of the first series. At dinner with actor Guy Slater and the writer Cary Harrison, (son of Rex Harrison – star of ‘My Fair Lady’), Guy announced that the BBC had just called and asked him to make a second series. Cheers all around till Guy said he wanted to start the series with doing the unforgivable, and kill the baby. Would Cary write it and would I direct the three episodes. Darned right I will.

Sadly during those years babies often died. We discussed how the baby should die. All sorts of diseases were discussed getting more and more unusual. I said why not just ordinary gastroenteritis. They had not invented penicillin then or at least they had but did not know how to use it. I know because my bother James had died of gastroenteritis aged five in 1947.

They gave him penicillin but in one large dose. It did not work. As we now know it has to be a course of treatment and not just one dose. I described how it effected my mother, my father and myself. The matter was left at that.

I had just got into bed when the phone rang. It was Carey, “Would you and your family mind if I based the three episodes on your brother’s death?” I said I would talk to my mother who was living in Gozo, even though she would probably never see it as she had no TV. She said, yes, if I was directing it. So that is what we did. I spent a weekend with Carey discussing the real events and the casting of my mother, father and self.

While shooting there were two moments that caused problems. My mother was not allowed to go near or even touch James as he was in isolation. She just had to watch him as he slowly died. She left the hospital and alone walked home, 13kms. To show this half conscious women treading slowly step by step over that distance I created a very long tracking shot with Anna Cropper playing mother staring at nothing, moving mechanically and way beyond tears. The head of BBC drama told me the shot was far too long and that nobody would do that. “My mother did !” “OK then”.

Another moment was when mother still dumb with shock was burning all James’s toys, books and teddy bear, everything of his was on a bonfire in the garden and myself standing aside watching. When we came to shoot this I got a deputation from the make-up and costume departments saying this was going too far. I had to explain that in the 1940’s it had to be done to sterilize every thing in the house. One of the teddies she burned was mine, but I never told her.

When the scenes crew were digging his grave the police suddenly arrived wanting to know what on earth they were doing digging a grave. A local woman putting flowers on her family grave had seen this strange gang of men digging away and reported them.

In the story the family Nanny was with were wonderfully mad. He was local Norfolk with a strong accent and an inventor. Everything in the house was automatic and didn’t work. There was a scene of wonderful spontaneous singing of old Norfolk songs with the family in the local pub which when shooting became a real ad lib event, not an acted one. The whole studio burst into applause at the end. I shot it in one take.

Michael Custance

Nanny – Michael Custance, Part 2

One story was with Nanny working for a posh family living in the Royal Crescent in Bath.

“Well Nanny how nice of you to come to us and a blue uniform too I do like blue now I will introduce you to baby and the others” “Others? I was told you only have one baby” “Quite right Nanny only one baby and 5 other children now come along to the nursery”.

One daughter was to be suffering from psychosomatic disorder and would wake up in the night screaming in terror. The young actress of just 8 years was quite brilliant. We were amazed that she was able to act like that at her age and at the same time have school lessons from a tutor between shots. She said with disarming simplicity “Oh it’s easy. When I am acting I am her and when I am not I am me”.

We cast Annabelle Lanyon as the older child aged 10. She was in fact 21, but looked much, much younger. In a restaurant one evening the waiter took all our orders and then turned to Annabelle saying “..and what would the young lady like, we have the children’s menu over the page”. Annabelle gently replied “oh that’s fine but I would like gin and tonic and then an entrecote steak, rare, with a large glass of your house red please”. Poor waiter, not his fault.

To shoot a scene of Nanny taking all of the children for a walk in the Royal crescent was a massive job. First we had to cover the road with peat to hide the yellow lines then employ loads of extras to stand in front of the parking meters but the biggest problem were the TV aerials which did not exist in 1936. We managed to persuade all the residents of that huge crescent to let us take them down and replace them with new ones when we had finished.

We could not record any dialogue in the park oposite because of the traffic noise and the police sirens so we moved the unit 200kms away to shoot the dialogue in the scene in Dartington Park near Totnes in Devon.

Nanny – Michael Custance (part 1)

In the days when I was a cameraman at Thames TV I met an actor called Guy Slater. We became and still are friends. Guy also created and ran the Horseshoe Theatre in Basingstoke. He then became a TV producer. So when the BBC asked him to produce a new series called ‘Nanny’ he asked me to direct 9 episodes of the first series and more in the second series. (years later Guy joined me to create the series ‘Small Stages’.)

“Created by the actress Wendy Craig ‘Nanny’ was a BBC television series that ran between 1981 and 1983. In this historical drama, Wendy Craig stared as nanny Barbara Gray, caring for children in 1930s England. When Barbara Gray leaves the divorce court she has no money, no job just an iron will and a love for children. “

Wendy was first noticed for her role in the film ‘The Servant’ playing beside Dirk Bogarde in 1963 where she won the most promising newcomer award. She was awarded a best actress award in 1969 and was awarded a CBE. Her TV fame came when starring in the very long and successful series ‘Butterflies’.

Years later I bought the rights to a novel by Dirk Bogarde, Voices in the Garden, and produced a film of it for the BBC.

When Wendy Craig submitted her proposal for the series to the BBC she used the pseudonym Jonathan Marr because she was afraid that if her true identity was known she would be dismissed as merely “an actress who thinks she can write.

The structure of the series was that Nanny went to work in a family with children for three episodes and then moved on to another family. Thus each director made a story of three episodes. I made three stories, nine episodes, in the first series and one story in the second series making twelve episodes in all. Guy asked me direct more but I feared being a ‘Nanny’ director for too long.

Association of Directors and Producers – Michael Custance

A.D.P: Association of Directors and Producers

From when ‘Jimmie’ Cellan Jones was directing ‘Jennie, Lady Randolf Churchill’ and told me he was part of a group of directors fighting the managements to get paid for repeats and foreign sales, known as director’s residual payments, matters had progressed and A.D.P., The Association of Directors and Producers had been formed. I joined, was co-opted onto the board of ADP management and created a monthly ADP newsletter. I stayed on the board and edited the newsletter until I started to make ‘Spyship’ three years later. With its 46 location all over the UK and the North Sea and the Arctic and over a year of production there was not time to do both so I resigned from the board and editorship.

ADP had gone from strength to strength and had won the battle. Since then all directors and producers receive a percentage of their fee for all repeats and sales worldwide. ADP was was also very influential in forcing the govt. to design the future new Channel 4 TV not to make programmes but to commission programmes from Independent Producers. This changed the face of UK TV by allowing producers to create their own programmes and sell them to the TV channel. Now that method applies in whole or part to every UK TV channel.

Whilst setting up ‘The Unborn’ there was a daring homosexual play being shot in the studio called ‘Solid Geometry’ by Ian McEwan. It was creating furious complaints from the costume and make-up depts. So much so that the technical head of the studios pulled all of his staff out of the studio and paralysed the shoot. The problem, there was a pickled erect penis in a jar on the mantelpiece in the set. The producer and director came to me asking for help from the ADP. I said I would call the president immediately but was not sure if ADP could help as it was in place to fight for working conditions and not bottled penises which is a censorship or public decency issue. This proved to be the case. I think the shooting went ahead minus one glass jar.

[N.B. the shoot of ‘Solid Geometry’ was actually halted, and the production cancelle].

Opening of BBC Club

This photo is from the opening of the new BBC Birmingham Club circa 1982. The original club at Pebble Mill was on the second floor of the office block. That become programme offices when the new Club building was built across the bridge over the Bourne Brook.

The photo includes:

Phil Sidey, Phil Thickett, cameraman (back row striped shirt), Gail Everett, PA (nee Herbert, back row, to the right of Sue), Brian Johnson next to Gail, Freddie Foster right, Stuart Miller (striped shirt), Peter Skinner, Assistant Accountant (extreme right middle row) Keith Jones, Building Engineering Services Manager, Colin Spears, Sue Robinson (front pink dress), Lesley Sleigh next to Sue.

Julie Hill added the following memory on the Pebble Mill Facebook page:

“Ah such happy memories of the BBC Club! I used to take the Minutes of the Club meetings for extra money! Remember the crazy squirrel who used to attack us on the bridge? Highlights include watching harrier jump jet land on the grass and the whole building shook. And being tasked with stopping Larry Grayson drink. I failed….”