A bit later on, I got put on the board. And then as company secretary, you did a legal report every board meeting, once a month, and you did a little piece, and spoke to the board about what was going on. It would be the late 80s by then. It was a fascinating time.…
Read MoreAlastair Mutch and Granada’s franchise bid
Being Company Secretary at that point I was at all the board meetings, all the discussions, all the drafts of the documents that went into the submission. And, of course, the secrecy around it was enormous. We knew we were under threat from Liverpool. Phil Redmond was pitching. I don’t know if you know about…
Read MoreAlastair Mutch remembers Granada board meetings
Well, it was up in room 600, on the sixth floor conference room. They were fairly relaxed affairs. I started going to the meetings when Denis Forman was Chairman. In fact, I well remember my first stab at doing the minutes. I was very conscientious and the system was that he always read the minutes…
Read MoreAlastair Mutch reflects on his Granada years
I think, overall, I was born at the right time. I think I was extremely lucky. Apart from the first few years of bombs, we had a long era of peace.I ended up at Granada, which was a fabulous place to work. Then three or four years with Ray (Fitzwalter) and Luise (Nandy) (at Ray…
Read MoreAlastair Mutch on Granada Studio Tours
John (Williams) was an intake of management trainees the same time as Tony Brill, Bill Tomlinson, one or two others. He was very ambitious, John. He ran Tours very well, but I think he could talk about Charles Allen because he said… Allen said to John, because they had retail outlets for the tourists, “You…
Read MoreAlastair Mutch transcript
Interviewed by Geoff Moore, 6 May 2019. So take us back to your early life and where you grew up and so on. Early life was a long time ago! I was born in Wembley, right at the beginning of the war, so it was a fairly lively upbringing. Not that it bothered me at the…
Read MoreAndrew Quinn biography
Andrew Quinn joined Granada TV’s personnel department from General Motors in 1964. He took on a variety of roles within the company including head of production services and general manager before being appointed the managing director of Granada Cable and Satellite in 1983. He became managing director in 1987 and chief executive five years later. …
Read MoreHow Andrew Quinn joined Granada
After Durham University, I went looking for a job. And the first job I ever had was with a division of General Motors, which was based in Dunstable, which is near Luton, which is where Vauxhall cars got made. The division that I worked for made car parts and accessories. Fuel pumps and thermostats, and…
Read MoreAndrew Quinn remembers meeting Sidney Bernstein for the first time
I did eventually meet Sidney, three months in. By which time, I’d encountered the Sidney Bernstein myths and legends. Didn’t like suede shoes, didn’t like cord trousers, didn’t like men with beards, and all this stuff that… anyway, I didn’t own any suede shoes or didn’t have any cord trousers, and I didn’t have a…
Read MoreAndrew Quinn’s impressions of the personnel department
Anyway, so I joined the personnel department. One of the biggest changes was that Derek Roberts said to me, “We have to trade union in here, and you’ll be looking after NATKE. National Association of Theatrical, Television and Kine Employees. And I’ll be doing the ACTT and the ETU he said, because they’re a slippery…
Read MoreAndrew Quinn’s role as head of Production Services
Forman said to me, “I want you set up a new thing called head of production services,” and that means everything behind the camera. The creative guys and the director… they’re in front of the camera and the whole point is to service them, and we’ve got to find a new way of forecasting costs,…
Read MoreHow Andrew Quinn became general manager and recruited other managers
In 1977, the guy who was the general manager, Leslie Diamond, died suddenly from a heart attack, and so Denis said to me, “You’re general manager” and I joined the group, the board at that stage, and being general manager just meant I went on doing what I was doing, but got the rest of…
Read MoreAndrew Quinn on Granada’s move into satellite
Let me just say, the satellite thing came along next. And it was pretty much the same thing. Putting a consortium together. The famous club of 21. BBC were given the job to do. Said they couldn’t do it. Government came back and said, “You’ve got to do it. You have 50%. And we’ll get…
Read MoreAndrew Quinns’s thoughts on the 1990 Broadcasting Act
The 1990 Broadcasting Act brought in this ridiculous idea that you had to bid away a proportion of your profits on a ten-year horizon. Ridiculous. At the same time, Channel 4, which had up to then, been funded by the ITV system, in return for the ITV system selling the air time, that came to…
Read MoreAndrew Quinn on the arrival of Gerry Robinson and Charles Allen.
The Granada Group were in trouble. Remember there’d been a takeover bid from Rank, which successfully we escaped from simply because the IBA said they wouldn’t let Rank have the television franchise. It wasn’t a transferable asset. They’d give them to Granada and in the bidding for it they’d have to do it without. So…
Read MoreAndrew Quinn describes how he became managing director of Granada
After the satellite thing, I’d been on the group board for just over a year, with a division called Services to Business, which was a group of companies, one was Computer Field Maintenance, mending people’s computers, and frankly, I wasn’t very thrilled with it. And then I was approached by head-hunters, on behalf of Central…
Read MoreAndrew Quinn talks about Granada Studio Tours
The Studio Tours project, tell us a little bit about that. Was that Plowright’s idea? Very much so, yes, yes. It was a good idea in an inadequate location basically. Really? Yes because we put a lot of work into it in advance, even to the point I would go to America on National Association…
Read MoreAndrew Quinn on his highlights of working at Granada
What are the highlights looking back over these times? What are your highlights of your time at Granada? Well, I don’t know. If I look back on it and I sort of couldn’t have had a better progression in life. I mean I suppose the norm for many people is that you hit your peak…
Read MoreNick Steer – Biography
Soundman Nick Steer joined Granada Television in 1979. He spent a year working on local programmes and was then assigned to work on World In Action. He went on to work ith Tony Wilson on So It Goes and then spent many years working on dramas such as A Tale of Two Cities, Cold Feet…
Read MoreDaphne Hughes describes how she joined Granada
I joined in August 1980. At the time, I had been working for BBC Radio Merseyside, where I had been very happy for five years. But Chris Kerr, who at the time, was involved with Merseyside Arts, used to come into Radio Merseyside and do short items and reviews on arts in the Merseyside area.…
Read MoreDaphne Hughes’s memories of Granada’s Exchange Flags programme
There would be people sitting in the actual area of Exchange Flags behind the town hall, sitting there having their lunch and we would come out say, “Do you want to be in the audience?” I have a glass of wine and a sandwich. I’m just rounding up these people. Sometimes though, we would ring…
Read MoreDaphne Hughes on her move to the Albert Dock
1986, it was the start of Granada in the Albert Dock. We all moved down to the Albert Dock, which, as you know, were the premises there. The Dock Traffic Office, and that whole Albert Dock development, was part of Heseltine’s initiative for Merseyside following the riots. Then, because of the whole structure of Granada…
Read MoreDaphne Hughes on her technical knowledge
You must have built up a great technical knowledge? Yes. Well, I mean I’m not a technical person as really, but I knew where people were. Again, just to go back to Tonight with Trevor, because we were in Manchester, but even when I went down and worked in London and the ITN office, I…
Read MoreDaphne Hughes on presenters she remembered
The people like Roger Blythe and Tony Wilson and Bob Greaves. I had always admired Tony and Bob for their ability to make… if there was a gap and the producer would say, “Could you talk for two minutes?” and these two could do it. They could do two minutes. I thought, “That’s amazing.” They…
Read MoreDaphne Hughes on the lure of the Crooked Billet pub
A lot of life went on in The Crooked Billet. One reason being that it was a shortcut to the car park, but inevitably, you didn’t always make the car park. You just stayed in The Crooked Billet, but for one or two or three and your car stayed in the car park. There was…
Read MoreDaphne Hughes describes working on This Morning in London
I’m on This Morning (in Liverpool), then in about ‘96 they made this announcement that This Morning was going to move to London. They just made this announcement saying this had been decided, that This Morning would move to London. I was happy to go, although they targeted certain people they called “key staff”, one…
Read MoreDaphne Hughes on the technical challenges of This Morning
The thing I found difficult, they did use to have a bit at the beginning of the show which they called news reactive. So they would comment… not so much Hillsborough, because that was… they devoted a lot of time to that. But they were devoted… bit at the beginning, a news reactive story, and…
Read MoreGlenda Wood describes preparing for a drama
What would be involved in working on a drama? Well, you get the first script – the first one was the white script, then the pink script came, then you got the blue script, which was the final one, and then you wrote down – they do it on a computer now, I believe –…
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Glenda Wood describes the skills needed by a make-up artist and the difference that colour television made to the role
There were always about 10 or 11 of us, and we used to bring a freelance in if we needed more. Did you ever go into the make-up room? We had these kitchen cupboard things down the middle, and we had to have more make-up space in there, so they put… you know those people…
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Glenda Wood on her encounter with Margaret Thatcher
Did you ever make up politicians, like Mrs Thatcher? Oh, God! Yes. Do you know, we never, ever got tips. Which is the nature of the game, isn’t it? But I went to Blackpool, and it was the year after the Brighton bombing – you wouldn’t believe the security to get in there! I was…
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