The NEW Central West and BBC Midlands thread

Apparantly, according to a couple of trails, he's from my neck of woods, Bloxwich/Walsall !

Now my one brother knew a Peach, but it's not his brother.

Mother reckoned my other brother knew some Peaches, so I'll have to ask him next I see him.

By the way, Les has done the gag about greeting him as 'Hello my old fruit!'

(Based on what some of us know about us about Mr Ross(I only knew a couple of years ago meself!), Pot, Kettle, Black springs to mind!)

Caught Mollie this morning, & she mentioned she turned up smart for a breakfast meeting this morning in a hotel!(Raised eyebrows)

Only slight problem was, she was wearing her slippers !

Bit of BBC WM news now.

Friday 11/4 was "30 years of John Platt at BBC Birmingham" day, with JP joining Les Ross between 2 & 3 on Friday to co-present a mini Network Gold of the songs in the chart that week in 1978, when Plattie first read the racing results on air. We also learned Nick Owen was involved in giving Plattie his big break, so Nick also appeared in the studio too, with Deadly Alancoat 'down the line' from London.

There was also a new 'The Other Side Of' interview broadcast on Friday & the previous Sunday.

Some kind person went into Mollie's car early last week, so she's been relying on taxis to get in for 5am. It all happened in the Mailbox car park & was captured on CCTV plus Mollie got the reg too, so someone will be expecting a visit from Inspector Knacker soon, if not already!

As if by coincidence, this week on WM, 'The Drive Safely' campaign starts with Flupton at 630am tomorrow.

Major highlight will be a drive off between Flupton & Franksy, to see who's got the worst bad habits, as mentioned in the Mail on Saturday, along with a piece about Franksy being involved in a road accident(which wasn't his fault BTW!) a few years back.

There was also a similar piece refering to Gold/ BRMB's Tom Ross as well.

(Going back to the Mail, how come I found a copy at 8am in my local garage?

I thought it was published mid morning for lunchtime & early afternoon for teatime?)

Quite a bit of banter on tonight's Midlands Today as Shefali forgot Dan Pallets name as she made a reference to him in the forecast.

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Shefali forgets and is left to stutter until Nick reminds her

Nick then went on to 'forget' Shefali's name at the end of the weather leaving Suzanne to name check everyone.

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End of The Programme - Nicks banter and Suzanne name checks

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Now that's an impressive regional studio.

There's a further Rear Projection Screen for Network news is the time comes and there may be some form of frosted overlay on the newsroom window.

Is the Mailbox the newest regional centre? Is it newer than the Forum in Norwich?

newer than Norwich
EDIT :Mailbox is still the most advanced Digital SD Newsroom in Europe.

Norwich is positively tiny compared to BBC Birmingham, remember its a major centre.

The newsroom its self is about the size of all of BBC Radio Norfolk's/Look Easts studios and newsroom.

The studio is actually bigger than it appears on TV surprisingly.

I'm not too keen on it TBH.

Well your stuck with it. They re launch on monday as expected but the set is still the same, and it's a good thing too because we know what BBC Midlands are like with sets (2003).

I'm hardly stuck with it. I live in the BBC South region.

Urrrgh, thats a terrible set