Michael Ryan began his television career in 1963 as a BBC2 trainee, working on Panorama as a studio director. However a chance meeting in 1966 with Michael Parkinson in his father’s London pub, led to him joining Granada as a Researcher. In 1967 he worked on Cinema which, at the time, boasted an audience of over 14 million. A year later he joined World In Action as a producer and worked on many memorable programmes including persuading a whole village in Derbyshire to stop smoking, the Watergate affair, corruption surrounding Conservative Home Secretary Reginald Maudling and the funeral of South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko. Mike also produced What The Papers Say for many years. He left in 1992 when Granada decided to close down its London office but continued as a freelance TV producer.
