Although Jim Walker never worked on Coronation Street he was a producer at Granada for more than 20 years and was always in close contact with the actors and production staff during that time. As such he saw a great many changes in the format of the show. Before I conjure up the glamour of…
Read MoreJim Quick – Graphic Artist
Jim Quick was a graphic artist who worked on the Street during the 1970s and 80s. In late 1972 I was given the great glory of working on the Street which turns out wasn’t the great glory. The one thing every graphic designer hated about Coronation Street, the biggest bore in everything you did…
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Roland Coburn’s memories of the Granada canteen and the Stables
People have mentioned to me about the canteen, the bar and the Stables being very important? The canteen was very important, for several reasons, I always thought, because anybody who was working at the station and wanted anything to drink or eat would have to go in the canteen. There was none of this, ‘Oh,…
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Roland Coburn’s memories of Sir Denis Forman and the Bernsteins
Occasionally I was taken off to do particular one-off programmes because, perhaps, World in Action was off the air, and things like that. One of them was The Battle of Monte Cassino; this was the battle in which Sir Denis had been injured and lost his leg during the war. Sir Denis often used to pop…
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Roland Coburn talks about how technical changes have affected the work of the editor
You were there at Granada when you get this crucial change in film editing? Yes. One of the great things was, obviously, film would have to move, in the sense that you would shoot the film, it’d have to go to the labs, it’d have to be developed, you would get a print to edit,…
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Roland Coburn remembers working on World In Action for over 20 years
Ultimately, it came that there was an editor’s job. I applied for it and luckily I got it. You then started editing ‘proper’ programmes. I was lucky enough to do a Bulman and a Strangers which, in those years, were ITV’s top drama programmes. Not many people now will remember them, but they were great,…
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Roland Coburn remembers meeting the stars of Coronation Street
She (his mother) was also involved quite heavily, in the early days, on Coronation Street. She was very good friends with Violet Carson, Ena Sharples, Elsie Tanner, Pat Phoenix and Doris Speed, who was Annie Walker. They were always at our house, and I was always wandering round with mother to their houses, because Pat…
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Roland Coburn recalls working with Ken Russell
I was sent to the Lakes with Ken Russell, who was then a features director. So having a features director work on a television programme was interesting, to say the least! David Warner was in it, and Felicity Kendal — people like that. We were up there, and we actually edited the programme in Ken…
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Roland Coburn on working in local programmes
What kind of programmes did you work on after doing those initial dramas? Well, it was a bizarre setup really, because when I was an assistant, ITN used to have a north-west reporter, who used to come up to Manchester and do little north-west news items. The very first thing I cut was a fifteen-second…
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Roland Coburn on how Granada changed in the late 80’s and early 90’s
So the company begins to change, in the late eighties and into the early nineties? Yes. It almost seemed to come at the same time as Maxwell took over the Mirror, because he moved into the Mirror, which was in Manchester — because I knew people that worked at the Mirror — and all of…
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Roland Coburn on Granada as a company and employer
It was a brilliant company to work for. Everybody seemed to want to do their best for the company. Everyone said, ‘I work for Granada Television, because they make the best programmes’, and they did. Jewel in the Crown, Brideshead Revisited: these wonderful dramas that they would make, and they would spend a lot of…
Read MoreRoland Coburn explains the ten-hour break!
You were well rewarded? Well, you were well rewarded in the sense that you got overtime, and overtime was often an incentive for a lot of people to go beyond what was normal. On World in Action — and it went through across the board — if you did work overtime, you’d have to have…
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Ann Lewis on Granada as an employer
So what did you think Granada were like as a company towards its employees? How do you think it treated its employees? Well it could be very easily over-simplified and said they were very paternalistic and very ‘blah, blah’ but I don’t think that was the case in everybody’s experience. I think there was a…
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Ann Lewis recalls her first impressions on joining Granada
So what was your impression of coming to work for Granada, not having worked in television before? It was very exciting, it was very exciting the prospect of working in the media. In fact, what I did was I sent applications off to all kinds of places where I thought if I’m going to be…
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Ann Lewis recalls about the challenges she faced when she tried to change her role
So you were a secretary but you obviously had ambitions to be more than that. I wondered if you even applied for other jobs? I did, I did. In my efforts to get out of the secretarial role, I applied, there was a job came up as a studio camera operator. I think at that…
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Ann Lewis describes one of the disputes she was involved in as a shop steward.
So as union rep what kind of issues would you have to deal with? Oh there were some really interesting ones. In fact, Granada, I don’t know about other companies, but Granada I think it was in about 1975 were looking at getting an in-house crèche and I thought that was really good and we…
Read MoreGranada 500
The 1979 Granada 500 was produced by David Kemp and presented by Gordon Burns. This is the final session in London when the three party leaders underwent a grilling from the voters of Bolton. T
Read MoreLocal programmes
Local political programme featuring Michael Foot in his first TV appearance after being elected as leader of the Labour Party. On the left is Pat Pearson, director. In the background is Stuart Prebble and Mike Short with Stephen Kelly, kneeling foreground. Another view of Michael Foot with Stephen Kelly kneeling in front. The Beatles being… Read More
Union Power
Union Power production team. Front row, L-R: Lord Bill McCarthy, XX, Sir Keith Jarratt. Back row, L-R: Brian Morris, Producer; Stephen Kelly, Researcher; David Boulton, Editor; Jane Gabriel, Researcher; Gus MacDonald; Presenter, Clare Lasko, Researcher. Barbara Castle, Former Secretary of State for Employment, with Brian Morris, Producer Read More
Alistair Houston – Sound Engineer
Alistair Houston started working for Granada Television in 1958 as a Sound Engineer and spent his career there progressing to become a Senior Sound Supervisor. He was no. 2 on the sound crew for the first episode of Coronation Street and worked on the programme for the next three years before moving to other dramas.…
Read MoreGeoff Lancashire – Writer
One of Coronation Street’s finest ever writers, Geoff Lancashire worked alongside Tony Warren and Jack Rosenthal in the promotions department at Granada but told Warren that the programme would never last. He later to write on many hundreds of scripts for the soap between 1964 and 1981 and is also remembered as the creator of…
Read MoreGeoff Hinsliff – Don Brennan
After training at RADA, Geoff Hinsliff appeared in many West End plays. He played characters in Coronation Street over three different periods from 1963 to 1997, but is best know for his role as cab driver Don Brennan, who married Ivy Tilsley in 1988. I was not too long out of RADA, I left in…
Read MoreDenis Parkin – Set Designer
Denis Parkin joined Granada Television in 1957 as a designer, most notably designing the original Coronation Street set, including the exteriors and the inside of each of the terraced houses to make them distinctly different depending on which characters lived there. He continued to work on the programme in the 1960s and also oversaw the rebuilding of…
Read MoreClarissa Hyman
Clarissa Hyman worked for Granada for many years as a researcher and producer and was one of the original launch producers for ITV’s This Morning programme. Now an award winning food and travel writer, she is the Vice-President of the UK Guild of Food Writers. It was my first job. It must have been the…
Read MoreChris Atkinson – Sound Recordist
Chris Atkinson worked as a sound recordist on Coronation Street during the 1970s, recording both on location and in studio. He continues to operate as a freelance in the UK television industry. I started working on the Street about 1978, 1979. I was a boom operator, that’s a recordist’s assistant. I would hold the mike…
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Brian Spencer – Cameraman
Brian Spencer was a freelance cameraman in the early 1980s who came from the BBC to work at Granada. He worked initially on regional programmes and regularly found himself filming exterior inserts for Coronation Street. He later worked as a lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University. I had been a film cameraman in television for some…
Read MoreEthnicity
If there was one area where Granada did not have a good track record it was with ethnicity. During the 1970s and 1980s the company employed just a handful of black staff and most of these tended to be in the production areas rather than technical areas. Among production staff there was just one producer,…
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