Well, we had a wonderful time really, most of the time, but this was David’s idea, when Olivier… you know, I’d worked with Olivier at the National Theatre as literary consultant, and then I’d gone back to Granada and then when Olivier became terribly, terribly ill with this horrible form of cancer, this sort of…
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Phil Griffin on the specific geographical location of Granada
The complex is very interesting because then you have the water tower, leading onto the back of what’s now the Museum of Science and Industry site, and of course what people forget about the Museum of Science and Industry is that within the complex is the first passenger railway station in the world, and so…
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Jacki Turner’s memories of Coronation Street and its artistes
The first drama that everyone had to cut their teeth on was Coronation Street and I first worked on this iconic programme in 1969. In those days we recorded two black and white episodes a week. This meant that any outside film/VT was recorded on a Monday then everyone rehearsed Tuesday and Wednesday morning in…
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Jacki Turner talks about working on A Family at War and Sam
I loved period drama and in the early 70s A Family At War, written by John Finch, was my first drama series. We would shoot most of each episode in studio and then go to various locations to shoot outdoor sequences and reconstructed events. My most memorable episode was filming in Llandudno – David, one…
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Denis Granger on the origins of Brideshead Revisited
The idea of Brideshead, did that come from Sir Denis? No, I went to Denis and said, “I want to do this novel.” Why? Actually, it had been suggested to me by one of the directors on Country Matters, Donald McWhinnie, who was a great old BBC hand, and he directed The Four Beauties. And…
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Phil Griffin on Manchester as the second city
If you want to know the difference between Manchester and London, then look at World in Action and Panorama – not that World in Action wasn’t a London-based programme, it very largely was – but it took a different editorial slide, and it did something much more boldly and it didn’t… it hesitated now and…
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Derek Granger on the truth behind the Brideshead script
Did you write the script? Yes. We had to ditch the (John) Mortimer script. We ditched that at the very beginning. But it was a very difficult contractual situation because the estate had made the stipulation… there was a condition that if we had the rights, we had to accept their choice of adaptor. And…
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Phil Griffin on the Granada art collection
I’ve been interested in pictures most of my life, but seeing the Francis Bacon in the Granada reception opposite the Christopher le Brun and alongside John Hoyland, and Patrick Heron on the downstairs corridor, these just sensational, mid-century, largely abstract paintings that the Bernsteins had had collected, and it was Cecil’s son, wasn’t it, that…
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Jacki Turner remembers working on Staying On in India
In the early 80s Granada planned to shoot Jewel in the Crown, much of it on location in India. Prior to this they decided to make a film based on the book Staying On about life of the English Raj and how they headed for the hills in the heat of the summer. This would…
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Derek Granger on Charles Sturridge as the Brideshead Revisited director
Anyway, Brideshead met our first catastrophe. Indeed, it turned out not be a catastrophe at all, it turned out to be our saviour. The thing that really saved the show, and that was the strike that hit us when we were filming in Oxford, and we stopped then, and we lost our first director Michael…
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Derek Granger on the continuing success of Brideshead Revisited
We’ve all been up to Castle Howard again to do this shoot for Vanity Fair. As I say, 35 years on, it’s the 35th anniversary of the first transmission, and Vanity Fair are doing a commemorative photo shoot for us, and we got all the cast back, everybody really, except for Claire Bloom as Lady…
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Colin Weston biography
Colin Weston joined Granada as an out of vision trainee announcer in 1968.He left 18 months later to work at Anglia TV where he became an in vision announcer but then returned as a freelance in the early 1980s. In addition to his role as an announcer he also read regional news bulletins and voiced…
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Colin Weston on joining Granada as a continuity announcer
Well, I lived in south London with my parents and I always wanted to get into television, and I used to regularly watch the ITV stations down in London. And I said, “I’d like to do that job,” which was continuity announcer, station announcer whatever you want to call it. And I sort of looked…
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Colin Weston on the role of the continuity announcer
A continuity announcer that is a guy or a lady who sits there and provides announcements between programmes, telling you what’s coming on later in the evening or the next day. They’re also there if the programme breaks down or there’s some technical error you have to fill by coming in to apologise and things…
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Colin Weston on going ‘in vision’
You continued as a non-vision announcer for how many years? Well I starred in ‘68 and I think they went into vision in the middle 80s. Granada never liked in-vision continuity. They never followed suit from the other companies who had a lot of in-vision. I mean, you might remember ABC TV up here, who…
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Colin Weston on Granada as a company
Was it a good company to work for? Yes, I… well I worked in quite a few, although Granada mainly, yes, I found it good. I didn’t have any problems there, you know… we had a few union problems much later, but up to that point, no. I enjoyed working there actually, but I had…
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Jacki Turner remembers working on Game, Set & Match
Jacki Turner is at the far left of this photo with other members of the crew during filming in Berlin. In 1986/87 I started a project that would tie me up for a year – it was 13 episodes of three Len Deighton novels, Berlin Game, Mexico Set and London Match. Len had originally planned to…
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Jacki Turner remembers the Hollywood stars on All For Love
This photo shows members of the cast and crew from this production with jacki Turner in the centre. Another All for Love I worked on was shot mainly in the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool. The story was that a pair of lovers met regularly in a very large Victorian hotel bathroom and had hanky panky! This…
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Jacki Turner on working with the footballer, Kenny Dalglish
Scully was a six part series about a Liverpool schoolboy called Scully who was obsessed by Liverpool Football Club and its star Kenny Dalglish. We filmed most of it around Manchester in the middle of winter and one night I was asked to travel with Kenny in his car to make sure he knew how…
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Jacki Turner on the ‘Up’ series
This photo shows Jacki Turner on the left with two participants from the series, Jackie Bassett and Jackie McKinney. In 1992 I was asked to work on an important project called the ‘Up’ Series. This was started in 1964 when the World in Action team interviewed a cross section of children at 7 years old. This…
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Jacki Turner on leaving Granada in 1991
I took voluntary redundancy/early retirement at the age of 50 in 1991. The writing was on the wall that things were on the change in ITV. This was proved when in 1992 almost three-quarters of script supervisors were made redundant – they only kept on the girls who would act up as Production Managers etc.…
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Jon Savage biography
Jon Savage joined Granada in 1979 as a researcher, initially working on local programmes including This is Your Right. Other credits included Fun Factory and Granada Reports and also worked on pilot for a planned series on music and teenagers. The series was never made by Granada but Jon went on to write the script…
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Jon Savage on his researcher’s board to join Granada
Jon Savage far right with Phil Griffin and Sue Woodward I actually joined Granada in April 1979. But I went for the researcher’s board in November ‘78 and my position was that I was living at home with my parents still, I’m an only child, I was completing a Law Society’s solicitor’s qualification course…
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Jon Savage recalls working on the consumer programme This is Your Right
It took me quite a while to really find an niche, and actually at the time I started, and I didn’t find a niche for very long, because actually what I wanted to do wasn’t on the agenda, and I’m also very stubborn and if I don’t want to do something I don’t want to…
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Conference Photos
MMU Deputy Vice Chancellor, Professor Jean-Noel Ezingeard Jane Wells, daughter of Lord Bernstein Steve Morrison giving his keynote address Judith Jones and Stephen Kelly talk about the Granadaland Oral History project Leslie Woodhead talks about documentary making Read More
Jon Savage on his impressions of Manchester in 1979
I just remember it… London was derelict, but only in parts. I just remember… what I liked about Manchester was the space. I always liked urban spaces, one of my problems with London, one of the reasons I left London, was because all the space was filled in. And one of the things that I…
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Jon Savage on his relationship with Tony Wilson
Well, Tony and I worked on another… we were always working on things… in retrospect now, and I piece it together, actually I was always working on things that never worked. I did three pilots for possible programmes and none of them got made, so that in itself is indicative. The first pilot was in…
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Jon Savage remembers the Granada canteen
I seem to remember not minding the canteen. I mean, I’ve always been into practical food. I didn’t like the canteen. I just remember… I remember being in there once and we had a group called Dead or Alive in, Pete Burns, and he was not the total outrageous Pete Burns as we know,…
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Jon Savage on Tony Wilson, music and Granada
I saw Tony is a very complex person. I thought he was a genius presenter and have an enormous respect for that. I thought he was… I thought with Janet Street Porter, he was by far… those two were the best presenters in the UK because they did something beyond just parroting, reading off autocue.…
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