Joining Granada was for me a question of being in the right place at the right time. I had started life as a trainee vision mixer at Thames tv followed by a three years as a researcher on the children’s programme Magpie. I had wanted to try life outside telly for a time and had…
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Thelma McGough’s memories of The Krypton Factor
I worked on Krypton Factor with Nick Turnbull. That was the beginning of the best part of working at Granada. Pete Walker was the director on that, and Gordon and I used to travel around looking for, or interviewing, possible contestants for that. And do you know, that stood me in so much good stead…
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Arthur Taylor on the challenges of being a presenter
They persevered with the idea that I should present, which I didn’t want to do. From day one I didn’t want to do it. But I did, because it was experience and because if I hadn’t done it I would have kicked myself for being yellow, you know? So I read the news, I did…
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Chris Kerr remembers his days at Exchange Flags, Liverpool
David has already given you a brilliant account of those early days in Liverpool; they were the greatest fun and I have happy memories of meeting the inspirational Mike Short and the likes of Roger Blyth, Shelley Rohde and Nick Turnbull. Nick produced a late evening cabaret-style show called After All That This; he gave…
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Thelma McGough on the early days of GTV in Liverpool
Chris (Pye) and I went to the Liverpool office. It was behind the Town Hall, Exchange Flags and was a beautiful building. You went to the front door, Chris had a beautiful big office to the right and I had a beautiful big office to the left. There was no secretary, no staff, no anything.…
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Arthur Taylor describes producing for the first time
The first series I actually did get round to producing, and looking back it was, there was a thing called Songs from the Two Brewers, which was a folk music series. And I got on very well with Mike. I mean, he could be insufferable, and he was easily distracted. But he was basically a…
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Chris Kelly recalls the enjoyment of Clapperboard
Clapperboard was a movie programme that went out… it became a bit of a moveable feast, but it started at about 4:30 in the afternoon. And it was nominally a children’s programme, although, as you know, Granada took the cinema seriously, and so did we. And I remember doing an hour’s interview with Anthony Quinn,…
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Chris Kelly on some of the stars he met on Clapperboard
(It was a) A weekly programme. …. Chiefly Manchester based, but set visits, so we went to Pinewood quite a lot and various other places. We did a spin-off series called Clapperboard North West, in which we went to the places where they filmed very, very early movies, then on the Pennines, westerns they were.…
Read MoreChris Kerr on looking after the programme makers
After about a year at the Liverpool studio I was sent for to Manchester. Jules Burns was moving up a level and needed someone to take over running the researchers and journalists department. Effectively this meant making certain that all the 100 or so researchers had a programme to work on and that producers had…
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Thelma McGough on the day John Lennon died
Here’s an interesting story about my work at Granada Television. At some point, I was living in London but working in Liverpool. I think it was after the strike, and it was when I came back. And so my mother would travel down to London to look after my kids, and I’d travel up to…
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Arthur Taylor on producing the Cinema programme
When I was at university in London, I frittered away my time going to the cinema – I was a member of the National Film Theatre – going to the pub, and playing a lot of jazz. What I didn’t realise was that the time I frittered away became far more useful than the degree!…
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Chris Kelly on the faith Granada had in its young staff
The other great thing about Granada was they had enormous faith in young people. I mean, I remember once, I had read about a Picasso exhibition in Paris, 16 rooms, and he walked into one of them and allegedly said, “I didn’t paint a single canvas in this room.” Mind you, Picasso was known to…
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Chris Kerr remembers working at the Albert Dock
In 1986 Granada had decided to move its Liverpool operation to the Albert Dock to coincide with the Electronic Newsgathering revolution. Mike Short, Sue Woodward, the News Editor, and I spent many weeks interviewing potential staff. I got a call one afternoon from Rod Caird who was screen-testing possible presenters for a political programme; would…
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Thelma McGough meets Graeme Souness & Bill Shankly
Oh, a funny incident in the Liverpool office, long before there was like big, proper studios. Sometimes you’d have people come in to be interviewed and there were two sound guys there, that’s all I remember. And I remember Graeme Souness came in for an interview, and he was… there was a stand mic. I…
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Arthur Taylor on the success of GTV’s gardening programme
The thing about Granada, and I don’t know where it came from, but it was drummed into everybody without it being drummed in, if you know what I mean, it was just in the air, was that Granada would make programmes that would be better than anybody else’s, because they were more interesting, because they…
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Chris Kelly’s remembers working with Bill Grundy
I was obviously presenting Scene at 6:30 as it was then called, and within about a week or a fortnight, literally, I was producing a programme called Granada in the North, which went out at 10, 10:30 at night. GIN for short, which turned out to be a rather prescient nickname, because there was a…
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Chris Kerr on the work of the Granada Foundation
After a few months I was invited, in terms that didn’t invite a refusal, to take responsibility for the Granada Foundation. Kathy Arundale has given a concise summary of the Foundation’s history and work. It had been run up to then by Leslie Diamond the General Manager but he was retiring and, given my background…
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Thelma McGough on GTV as a caring company
I found them to be very caring of their employees. I always refused a staff contract – foolishly, in hindsight – because it came with the pension and I didn’t think I would live long enough to have a pension, and I didn’t want to think about it. And here I am, two months off…
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Arthur Taylor on the origins of ‘Band of Year’
One of the most interesting things that happened was the whole brass band thing. That only happened… I’d done a series called Out Front. The idea of Out Front was that each programme would be a different form of minority music, but music that had an enthusiastic following. A small but enthusiastic following. So I…
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Chris Kelly recalls working with James Cameron
I produced the stuff there (in Gibraltar), as I say, with James Cameron. Tell me about that. Well, as I say James… James could sober up enough to write in half an hour what you’d been thinking all week. So he began his piece – I think it was for the Evening Standard, or whichever…
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Thelma McGough on LWT and the legacy of Granada
In hindsight I’ve realised that what Granada gave me was the ability to be able to thrive in all sorts of different situations that I might not be qualified to do or not. But that really was invaluable when I came to move to produce Blind Date. I just realised your instincts are so honed…
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Arthur Taylor on the impact of brass brands in USA
But the brass band thing was great. I went to America, would you believe? During the course of all this, I met a guy called Bob Burnett, who was an American musical academic who suddenly discovered British brass bands, and he came over here on a sabbatical, and went to every contest including the Granada…
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Chris Kelly on his work on World In Action
I worked on World in Action for years. I was the sort of principal commentator sort of thing… well, for one season, Bill and I did the links live in the studio, which was great – although it can’t have been that great because they dropped it! And I didn’t get a credit to begin…
Read MoreArthur Taylor on a secret mission for World In Action
Going back a long way to Songs from the Two Brewers, one of the people who emerged from that I thought was a tremendous talent was Ralph McTell. In fact, that series was the first time that anyone had seen or heard Streets of London, would you believe? And again, I went to Scott and…
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Chris Kelly on ‘Granada man’
I mean, there’s such a thing as Granada Man. Peter Eckersley wrote this wonderful Guide to Granada Man (and woman), although there were no brackets in those days. And it was pugnacious, and it was left leaning, of course. It was very confident. I mean, if somebody said to you, “What do you see yourself…
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Arthur Taylor’s memories of Mike Scott
Fantastic enthusiasm. Very creative. I think an absolute top notch interviewer – one of the best. Either one to one, or interviewing a hall full of people, he was terrific. He used to empathise with people, and he wanted to create something different at that time in local programmes, and was willing to take risks…
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Chris Kelly on Granada’s geographical & cultural range
When you joined Granada, Yorkshire Television was still part of the… Yes. How did that work? I don’t know. As far as I was concerned… by going out and doing reports in Yorkshire. I remember interviewing Laurence Olivier at the Sheffield Playhouse. One story with Les Woodhead directing, which was a guy who had made…
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Chris Kelly’s memories of the Bernsteins
I used to see them around a lot because that was the other great thing about Granada was they ate in the canteen along with us peasants. And so it was important, that, because you’d see them – and you know, honestly they could fire us if they felt like it – but it felt…
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Arthur Taylor on the changes at GTV in the late ‘80’s
Towards the end I was doing some directing as well, and I was back on Down to Earth. And I did a film at Southport Flower Show, which is a very old, established, traditional flower show in a big park in Southport, very famous, in August, and it rained. It rained for a whole week…
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Chris Kelly describes his impressions of Denis Forman
Denis, yes. He was a rather strange character. He came down… I remember Peter Eckersley once said that he’d gone up, it was time to renew his contract so he went up to the sixth floor, and when he got there Forman was playing the piano – because he was a great Mozart authority, as…
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