I wondered how the changes in technology have affected your role. Has it made it easier? I think it’s a journey that’s taken place over very nearly fifty years. So when I embarked, and talking about cameras that weighed over 42 lbs. and were powered by 12 volt car batteries and things like that, and…
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Don Jones on Scramble and Granada’s links with the North West
Granada was important to the North of England? Yeah. People I knew used to think it was fantastic that I worked at Granada. People thought it was exciting. And it was an exciting place to be, but I think people kind of knew it was quite a fantastic place and it had a certain mystery…
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Don Jones on the special atmosphere of Granada in Liverpool
Let me just ask you something about the Liverpool Manchester thing, since we ought to touch on it. Am I right, it was set up by Plowright as a franchise-winning idea – it looked good to have not just Manchester but Liverpool also contributing to the output of Granada. I don’t really know about that.…
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George Turner on filming distressing scenes
You were talking about filming in war zones and seeing very traumatic events. Did that take an emotional toll on you? Because obviously, it was probably physically tiring during that, but you recover from that, but seeing those kind of things and having to film them? Well I think that it’s interesting now when you…
Read MoreDon Jones talks about the difficulties union rules sometimes presented
The downside, I suppose… the union situation was difficult because I understand why a lot of the things were put in place, things like the ten-hour break and the rules about when people ate and the hours that people worked, I understood why all that was there. But it was bloody difficult at times, and…
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Don Jones’s memories of working with Tony Wilson
One of the first people I worked with was Tony Wilson, who I just thought was a fascinating character from day one. I knew who he was, obviously, before I joined Granada, but one of the first times I went out with a crew was with Tony Wilson. I learnt more from him that day…
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Don Jones on the characters and the best things about Granada
Looking back at it, which characters there impressed you and would you single out as really having made an impression? You talked about Doherty, obviously. Yeah, Doherty, Tony Wilson, Sue Woodward, and then I suppose a whole host of other people that I met and worked with at various times – people like Tim Sullivan,…
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George Turner’s memories of Sir Denis Forman and David Plowright
David (Plowright) I got to know moderately well. I mean he knew more of me than I probably did about him. But that’s only because of course in my early days he was actually the editor of World in Action. And like Denis (Forman), these were people at the top of the company that even…
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Don Jones on working on ‘a dream come true’!
In the summer sometimes we were loaned out to regional programmes, so you got to work on other types of programmes. And also at this time, Steve Hawes and Bruce Macdonald had decided to make a series called Rod and Line, which was a dramatisation of Arthur Ransome’s angling essays. Arthur Ransome is famous for…
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Don Jones remembers his mum’s and dad’s work as extras
Almost from when I first started at Granada, both my parents were working as extras on Coronation Street and other shows, so I used to meet my mum and dad, or one or the other – sometimes they were both there together – either in the canteen or in the old school, for lunch. And…
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Granadaland Conference set to celebrate company’s 60th Anniversary
May 2016 marks 60 years since Granada Television began transmitting to ‘the north’. It was to become the only commercial television company to never lose its franchise and was described by the New York Times as ‘the finest television company in the world’. The company was founded by Sidney Bernstein and became famed for its innovation, radicalism and quality…
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Tony Drinkle describes how he joined Granada
Well, I left school at Christmas in ’55, and I started working at an advertising agency just off Peter Street, you know, brew boy, errands, things like that. And one lunchtime – I used to walk around town, as you do, have a wander around – and this particular day I was walking down Quay…
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Tony Drinkle on working in the post room and film dispatch
Yes. Do you know the names Bill Leather and Graham Wild? Graham Wild I knew, yes. Well, he was already in the post room, he started before I did. And Bill Leather, I think he went to production manager or along those lines. They were both there when I started. Jack, Jack Dardis, who goes…
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Tony Drinkle’s memories of Granada in 1956
Well, we started off in what was called Granada House in Water Street, you know the building in Water Street? It’s now the Royal Bank of Scotland, opposite the college. Because the offices were there, the first studio like where they are now, across from Quay Street, but the next one was the main entrance…
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Tony Drinkle on moving into Quay Street – and his life there
Into the big building? I couldn’t say for certain. It was probably… it was a good four or five years later, as I say, I started in 1956 and I had roughly two years in the post room, so going up to 1958. While I was in film dispatch, all the film was done in…
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Tony Drinkle remembers a few cock-ups!
Alan Ringland, he dropped one of the biggest clangers before I started doing it, on 42nd Street, he cut the song out! The… the biggest mistake I might have made, and it was my own fault, was… where the films… you’d have a running time for the film, and especially at weekends or on a…
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Tony Warren obituary
Tony Warren is a name that will forever be synonymous with Granada Television and, of course, with Coronation Street. Tony’s death, earlier this month at the age of 79, ended a career that spanned Granada from 1960 through to the present time. He will be sorely missed by all those who knew him and worked…
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Steve Morrison recalls how he came to join Granada
I was a student at the National Film School, which is now the National Film and Television School, and I was in its first ever year when it opened. And I had started making an observational film about my local Labour Party, which was the Norwood Labour Party; it was largely about their social interaction.…
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Steve Morrison on his first day at Granada
On my first day, they didn’t have an office for me because this documentary unit was a gleam in Gus’s eye, but nobody knew about it. So what the hell are we going to do with this guy who has turned up, and they said, “Look, why don’t you go into the studio and observe…
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Tony Drinkle on the technological changes he has seen
By the end, well before that finished really, everything was being transferred to tape, the features and everything. One particular thing I remember, which probably wouldn’t happen these days, but it’s one of those things that stick in your mind… quite often we wouldn’t get a film until the day it was going out because…
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Mike Beckham talks about how he came to join Granada.
I joined Granada in 1962. I was picked up at university, | was very lucky. I won the NUS Sunday Times drama competition and by great good luck, Derek Grainger happened to be in the audience. I’d done a lot of theatre at university, and he said, would you like to apply for a production…
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Mike Beckham on working on Coronation Street
As production trainees, we were extraordinarily privileged because we were in a position where we knew we were going to be producer-directors. I joined on the same day as Leslie Woodhead. We were the second batch of production trainees. The following year were Mike Apted and Mike Newell, so that was the golden year. And…
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Steve Morrison talks about working on Granada Reports
I got another phone call from Gus, after a couple of years, who said, “I want you to be the Editor of Granada Reports,” which was the nightly news programme. And of course I never worked in news, so there was a fearsome News Editor with a beard, who was very tough, on the news…
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Mike Beckham moving from Coronation Street to World In Action
I then did some not very good detective series that I didn’t like and they weren’t all that good. I asked to start making films. I joined a series called ‘This England’ run by Denis Mitchell and Norman Swallow, who were two very good documentary filmmakers. The key to the series was that there would…
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Steve Morrison recalls managing local programmes
It would be 1976-77. I was asked if I would run the whole of Granada’s regional programmes, which was a very, very interesting job, because you were like a TV station within a TV station, nobody higher up the building really cared, although obviously regional programmes are very important for the licence and the franchise,…
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Mike Beckham describes how WIA was run
It was one of Granada’s jewels in the crown, as it were. It had the money, it had the backing, and above all it had the talent. There were some fantastic producers on there and some very good editors like Jeremy Wallington and Leslie Woodhead, Gus Macdonald, John Birt. It had the backing and the…
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Steve Morrison talks about the Northern Documentary Unit
Basically, Gus (MacDonald) invented a new role, or a new unit, called the Northern Documentary Unit, and he said, “You’ll be running the Northern Documentary Unit, you make little films just for the region, and you find stories and you find directors, and I’ll give you a couple of researchers,” one of whom was Anna…
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Mike Beckham describes his proudest WIAs
It’s extraordinary being in Vietnam because as I say, you’ve been in the Stables, and then a week later you’re in a helicopter in a battle zone. You had total access. The Americans allowed crews to go anywhere they wanted to, all you had to do was go to Tan Son Nhut and say, is…
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Steve Morrison’s memories of working on World In Action
After I had ben running the documentary unit, Gayle and I – who were not romantically connected, but did films together – were invited to join World in Action, which obviously was a very glamorous programme, and we soon discovered that we were the ‘quick turnaround’ team. So while all the more established members of…
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Mike Beckham remembers Golden Square
I loved the smallness of Golden Square. You know, there was World In Action, the lovely girls in the casting department, very talented, and there was the drama department. We all drank together in the various pubs around Soho. And it was still great so go up to Manchester to see all the editors and…
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