I had applied once previously and they said, “No, no, no, you’re too valuable. We can’t let you go. We want you to stay.” The attitude changed completely once I became shop steward and became a troublemaker. So they decided that, “Well, maybe we can let you go.” I said, “Yes, but I want a…
Read MoreJohn remembers Jim Grant (aka Lee Child) and some awkward times as Shop Steward
Right, so we move on now to I was deputy steward for the union BECTU under Jimmy Grant in 1994, when Jimmy was Shop Steward. Now, you probably know Jim better as Lee Child. So, I was deputy steward under Jim from 1994 to 1997, and I remember Jim telling me as a transmission controller,…
Read MoreJohn on becoming a lighting director
In 1980 I got my own crew. Or ‘79, ‘80, I got my own crew, with certain people on it, and it took me until 1988 to get a job as a trainee lighting director. I applied three times. Well, the first time they wanted two, because they were going to train new lighting directors…
Read MoreJohn’s early years at Granada
I started on October 4, 1964. Tom Price was the head of cameras, and I was put on Les Chatfield’s crew. Les, at the time, was still working as a senior cameraman. Shortly afterwards, he had back problems, and he was taken off and he was put on a director’s course, which was really good…
Read MoreJohn talks about how he always wanted to be a film cameraman
I always wanted to be a film cameraman. Not a television cameraman, a film cameraman. When I was about 9 or 10 years old, I had a shed at the end of the garden that my parents used to put me in, and I had a projector and 30 large reels of 9.5mm films, and…
Read More
Jane Houston on the people who have influenced her – and the PA’s role
I mean the characters really that influenced me the most, I would say would be Hilda Miller and Sue Wild. Just because I wouldn’t have probably ever known about the job if it wasn’t for Hilda. And then she was just such a big influence in training me. And then we worked together for a…
Read More
Jane Houston how computers changed the PA’s role
Going back to when I’d been at school and my careers teachers had said, because I was very good at maths, “You should be going for a career in computers, get a proper job rather than going into television.” So, I think when computers were introduced, I just embraced it, and was lucky that I…
Read MoreJane Houston’s memories of the Granada drama series, Families
Granada were starting a new soap opera called Families. And I was one of the first PAs to work on that, three or four of us. And that was the first soap opera to do four episodes a week. And it was the first one at Granada where we were using a computer to type…
Read More
Jane Houston remembers an emergency on This Morning
We hadn’t been on air that long with This Morning when Lockerbie happened, and obviously the whole running order went out the window that morning. We used to always go through to central control. We would check the running time each day and the segments. We invariably went on air at 10:40:00 and came off…
Read More
Jane Houston on the early days of This Morning and going to Disneyland
I can remember when Granada were awarded This Morning, we all thought it would last six weeks. Taking crew every day on a coach to Liverpool, and that it wasn’t going to last. And here we are however many years later, and it’s still going strong. But it felt like it was… the same crew…
Read More
Jane Houston on her PA training and the excitement of live TV
Well, I was trained at first by Hilda Miller, which was strange because she was really the reason that I wanted to do the job, because she was my mum’s friend. So it was weird to be trained by her. I’d known her all my life. But it was fine, and I took to it…
Read More
Jane Houston remembers working on The Jewel in the Crown
The biggest thing for me about Jewel in the Crown was communication, because of course there were no mobile phones or computers in those days. And I ran the office in the UK for most of the time when they were in India. So just everything was done really by telex. Of course, there was…
Read More
Jane Houston describes working on Brideshead Revisited
Presumably fairly soon after you joined you went to work for the production managers. What did that involve? See, nowadays, they would be called line producers. But then everything was very different and they did all of the scheduling and budgeting and finding locations, all of that. We didn’t have a location manager and a…
Read More
Jane Houston’s memories of Granada as a child
So your dad, Alastair Houston, worked at Granada. When you were growing up, was that your memory of your dad always worked there? Yes, always, and I always wanted to be with my dad. And so one of my very earliest memories is being pushed in my pushchair across the cobbles, which would have been…
Read MoreSylvia Cowling
Interview by Stephen Kelly with Sylvia Cowling, 1 July 2020 Sylvia, let’s start with how you came to join Granada Television and when? Right. I joined in June 1970. It was my first proper job. I’d had vacation jobs before as a student and they’d been mainly, in fact wholly, in academic libraries over in…
Read MoreJim Hancock
Interview with Stephen Kelly and Jim Hancock, June 18 2020 How did you come to join Granada, and what had you been doing beforehand? Well, in the run up to that, I’d been president of Manchester University Students’ Union. And in the course of that job, I bumped into a chap called Norman Quick, who…
Read MoreJohn Scarrott
Interview with John Scarrott, 15 June 2020 When did you join Granada, and how did you come to join Granada? Right. Well, I always wanted to be a film cameraman. Not a television cameramana film cameraman. When I was about 9 or 10 years old, I had a shed at the end of the garden…
Read More
Jane Houston transcript
So your dad, Alastair Houston, worked at Granada. So when you were growing up, was that your memory of your dad always worked there? Yes, always, and I always wanted to be with my dad. And so one of my very earliest memories is being pushed in my pushchair across the cobbles, which would have…
Read More
Andre Singer transcript
Interviewed by Judith Jones, 4 June 2020. Andre Singer on how he joined Granada How did you come to join Granada? Because I don’t think you set out to be a filmmaker, did you? Not at all, absolutely not. I knew nothing about film whatsoever. I was a potentially bad academic at the time, and…
Read MoreAnne McGarry
Interviewed by Judith Jones, 9 July 2020. How did you come to join Granada? Well, I joined in ‘59 but I left grammar school at 16, did O-levels in ‘55, so that was when I was 16. Things were very different then, not many girls went to university, especially if you’re working class. I think…
Read More
Anne McGarry on what made Granada distinctive in its early years
There were two aspects to it. Firstly, there’s Granada as a working environment, and secondly, there’s Granada’s reputation, I suppose, as a television company. Firstly, compared with other companies I’ve worked for, before and since, during my time at Granada, I can own only describe the environment as being friendly and comradely. There was of…
Read More
Anne McGarry on how Granada extended its programming in 1964
Now, in the autumn of 1964, Granada as well as the transmitting Scene At 6.30 began to really emphasise its commitment to the North of England introducing what it called its Granada in the North concept and this involved two or three minutes of newsy features which were meant to supplement or replace the continuity…
Read More
Anne McGarry on Granada’s Graduate Training Scheme, launched in 1963
During 1963, Granada set up its Granada Graduate Training Programme. There were about a dozen young men, I think. I know there were men, I can only remember one young woman. As part of their training to find out what particular talents they had, they were assigned to a variety of programmes including the Northern…
Read More
Anne McGarry’s memories of Bob Greaves joining Granada
He (Bob Greaves) came to Granada, he replaced Terry Dobson as news editor. I think he was about 30 years old, although he was married and he had two children he gave me the impression of being a little older and more mature for his age. He was a lovely and pleasant and down to…
Read More
Anne McGarry on a typical day on Northern Newscast in the 1960’s
At the beginning, it was called Northern Newscast and it was a five-minute… sometimes it was little bit longer, sometimes they might give you six or seven minutes. You just had to take what they scheduled you on. So, my job description was that of secretary to the news editor, but the setup in the…
Read More
Anne McGarry’s memories of David Plowright
David Plowright was the news editor. He joined the company two years before. I had no idea what he’d eventually become, of course. And he was a 30-year-old man who was very energetic and confident, I’m even tempted to say charismatic. He was a friendly, no-nonsense type of a guy, who insisted on first name…
Read More
Anne McGarry describes the other members of the news team in the 1960s
The assistant news editor was Terry Dodson, he came from the Daily Express. He took over from David Plowright as news editor in 1960. It was him who was on duty the night Kennedy was assassinated. He was the first person who heard from the Press Association in London and passed it onto Barry Heads…
Read More
Anne McGarry describes the type of news stories Granada used to cover
Well, because of the very nature of news every day, every day was slightly different. There was a whole range of stories but you did, after a while, tend to categorise them. They would be the death and disaster ones, people hurt or killed in road accidents, fires, or at work or explosions, etc. Then…
Read More
Anne McGarry on two big stories – the Moors Murders and the assassination of President Kennedy
One of the biggest national stories we had to deal with was the Moors Murders, I remember. I think it must’ve been 1965. I was manning the newsroom one lunch hour and the others were having lunch in the canteen, and I got a phone call from our freelance cameraman who said he’d got a…
Read More
Andre Singer on how he joined Granada
How did you come to join Granada? Because I don’t think you set out to be a filmmaker, did you? Not at all, absolutely not. I knew nothing about film whatsoever. I was a potentially bad academic at the time, and finishing, or writing up, a doctorate at Oxford and worrying about what might have…
Read More