Norma Percy was born and brought up in America. After university in Ohio she studied at the London School of Economics and then became a House of Commons researcher for the Labour MP John Mackintosh. In 1972 she joined Granada to work with Brian Lapping on the State of the Nation series. This began a…
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Norma Percy on how she met Brian Lapping and joined Granada
I grew up in New York, and when it came to go to university, I wanted to get as far as possible from my family. So I went to a small college in Ohio called Oberlin, where there was an extremely charismatic Hungarian professor of International Relations. And all we government international relations students actually…
Read MoreNorma Percy described the first programme she worked on
This was State of the Nation Parliament. And roughly what year? Brian first came to me to help develop it in February 1972, and we wrote a proposal. I guess we got started actually. You didn’t have to write proposals and get them to develop it. We started work. But there were a lot of…
Read MoreNorma Percy describes the journalistic reconstructions she made with Granada
Brian (Lapping), very soon, with our fly on the wall films, we discovered that you could only get access to what they really want to let you in for, and it’s not the top stuff. Therefore you have to find other ways of doing it. It wasn’t the top stuff. He came up with two…
Read MoreNorma Percy on her powers of persuasion
How do you go about getting a president or a prime minister on screen? With difficulty! And with a lot of time. And it takes time. The first thing you need is time because Percy’s first rule is that everyone worth having says ‘No’ at least three times, so you need time to keep…
Read MoreNorma Percy on being a woman working in television
How was it for you as a woman in those years? I had a lot of problems with that. I got an award for women in film and media this year. And I probably made a not particularly well-judged speech that said, “I have a terrible thing to confess, I don’t have women in my…
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Norma Percy on leaving Granada
Brian (Lapping) was offered voluntary redundancy and set up… and Steve Morrison, or maybe it was Jules Burns, or maybe it was both of them, said, “Well, we could give you a job if Brian leaves, but it definitely would be in Manchester.” They made it quite clear that they probably thought it would be…
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