Brian Park on how he left Coronation Street and Granada

Did you enjoy it? Did I enjoy what? Working on Coronation Street? Oh, yeah, I really loved it. It was great having that amount of… it was like having a toy box and you just… yeah, we took risks, but… inevitably, with any job you do, I discovered, you have to stick your head above…

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Stewart Darby on how he started work at Granada

Ray Green (a photographer at Granada) tipped me brother off saying, “There’s a job going, tell your Stew to write in”, which I did. I wrote in, got an interview and there’s a guy called Vic Adeley who I was at the Mail with who got the job. Anyway about 3 month later I got…

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Stewart Darby’s memories of Sidney Bernstein

Let me give you, while it’s on my mind, a few Sidney stories, can I? This is fairly early days and Jack Smith (producer) had come across a very rare stamp and I was going to photograph him with this stamp with a glass, you know the sort of thing. The stamp die would be…

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Stewart Darby remembers going to India for Staying On

I used to go to work in the morning, shirt and tie, suit, smart because often the phone would go at five to six – David Plowright – “Stew, got some visiting the Penthouse, can you whip up and do a quick pic?” “Absolutely.” And produce them before they went. You know what I mean?…

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Stewart Darby on his friendship with the actor, David Hemmings

They were wonderful days when I think back. I say it was always my intention to get on with everybody. We did a thing in the Lake District called Clouds of Glory, Ken Russell directed. And David Warner and Felicity Kendal. And Ken Russell he used to be a stills-man in these early days and…

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Esther Dean describes how she came to join Granada

This is going to be quite a long story! I was always very stage-struck. I was brought up in Manchester. Even during the war I can remember going to the Robert Atkins, the open-air theatre from Regent’s Park coming up to the Whitworth Park. I think I was six and I saw Merchant of Venice…

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Esther Dean on her responsibilities once in production

Once you were in production, once you were filming or in the studio, what were your responsibilities then? Well, I liked to be around when the filming was going but obviously I couldn’t. But what I always liked to do was if there was an actor and they were wearing a new dress that hadn’t…

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Esther Dean on how costume brings out a character

  I think when we were talking about Hard Times, I don’t know if it was the same for Jewel, but you used costume as a way of placing someone in terms of time and perhaps their background, but also their position as a character, or how they felt. I always used to feel that…

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Esther Dean on the awards she received for her work

When I got the BAFTA for Hard Times, there hadn’t been craft awards before. I remember being very excited watching the awards when it was Country Matters and Derek Granger got the award for the best series, and we were jumping up in the air. I was in my flat but leaping round cheering that…

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Esther Dean’s memories of Sidney Bernstein

Bernstein used to walk round the building. He always used to walk round the building in a white shirt with rolled up sleeves. So all the managers used to walk round the building with white shirts and rolled up sleeves. He always used to eat in the canteen. Most places had a posh place for…

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Claudia Milne recalls the early programmes she worked on

It was a light entertainment programme called Nice Time. It had Kenny Everett and Germaine Greer, and Sandra Gough who was a Coronation Street star, and Jonathan Routh who had done a programme called Candid Camera, I think. It was very popular. It went out on a Sunday afternoon and they were hiring because it…

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George Turner on his early days at Granada

So we did lots of news stories and it could be everything, you know. Some pretty horrible stories, mine disasters in North Wales. Obviously what we didn’t know was… leading on to things like the ‘Moors murders’, and that was… We did two or three days a week, we’d drive to Leeds on a Wednesday…

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George Turner on the ethics in filming

Did you ever feel that we were exploiting people? Well it depends who they were. Some of them probably deserved to be exploited, I would say! [laughs] No, I mean I think at the end of if you’ve got two ways to look at it. You’ve got obviously the professional people like politicians and things…

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