So I presume there was a team of make-up artists. There was the person who was the principal, and then you would have all your assistants, and you’d worked it out, how many assistants you’d need. Generally it was only two, but when you had a big crowd of extras. I used to work it…
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Glenda Wood remembers the good times at Granada
What was Granada like to work for? From the word go they were smashing, absolutely smashing. I remember my boss was Michael… big tall fella, very handsome. Mike Scott. When I first started he was there. But yes, everybody was really nice. And I really do think that everybody enjoyed it so much – that’s…
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Glenda Wood’s memories of working on Coronation Street
What about some of the Coronation Street people? Pat Phoenix? Oh! Yes. I did her a few times. It’s funny, because the make-up she had was left over from the 50s. I don’t mean the pots that we had, but the way she had it was left over from the 50s. Is that what she…
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Glenda Wood talks about her work on ‘Stars in Your Eyes’ for which she won a BAFTA
So what programmes do you particularly remember? Well, I loved Stars in Their Eyes, it was a make-up artist’s dream to do that. I did that for the whole lot, I forget how much that… I got a BAFTA for that. Why did you enjoy that so much? Because it was perfect. If you were…
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Glenda Wood’s impressions of Sidney Bernstein and Denis Forman
Did you ever have any contact with Denis Forman or the Bernsteins? Yes. yes. I remember one night… we used to do What the Papers Say live at about 11pm, and I was sitting in the make-up room, waiting for whoever was doing What the Papers Say, and Bernstein came in. And he used to…
Read MoreNick Steer
Interviewed by Geoff Moore, April 2019. So, Nick just start us off with pre-Granada. Where did you grow up? Well, I grew up in Cornwall, in the Tamar Valley, very rural, and my father was a market gardener. I went to the local grammar school, which was absolutely tiny. There were, I think, 240 pupils…
Read MoreNick Steer talks about his time on World In Action.
So after that first year on local programmes, I then got assigned to World in Action with Alan Bale, who was the recordist and George Turner, who was the cameraman. A few of the other cameraman came in for various things, but it was mostly George. And I had about a year just doing that…
Read MoreNick Steer describes working on drama
Towards the later part of the 70s I started doing drama, mostly with Phil Smith but some with John Muxworthy, who taught me boom swinging, basically. And the sort of drama techniques. So you were an assistant on the dramas that you refer to… My first dramas, I was a boom swinger. Yes, boom operator.…
Read MoreNick Steer talks about the music programme, So It Goes
I’m a bit a little hazy in terms of the timescale, but I think it was probably… there was two series, and I think in the first series I was assisting Phil Smith and we recorded a band called Asleep at the Wheel at the Library theatre, who were sort of western swing. Directed by…
Read MoreNick Steer’s memories of the Manchester City documentary
Well, as I said, I had originally come in and my interest was documentary. But the kind of opportunities for that weren’t as great, I found. As I became more experienced in doing drama, I did really enjoy that. It was more challenging, because there’s documentary and documentary, really. A lot of what was classed…
Read MoreNick Steer on the challenges of filming a drama in two languages.
More drama, a 1988 A Tale of Two Cities, which is another big one. We were in Bordeaux shooting for, oh weeks, must have been nine, 10 weeks or something. Which was another great experience. That was an interesting one, because it was a co-production with a French company and the cost was half, well…
Read MoreNick Steer talks about working practices
When you look at the list of programmes, the perception was that when things started to change… I think when we were doing Tale Of Two Cities… Granada, whether there was money problems or whatever, I don’t know, Granada decided… I think it was Thatcherism as well. There had been the TV-am dispute, and all…
Read MoreSita Williams
Interviewed by Geoff Moore, 8 December 2019. So Sita, your early days, your early life. Tell us a bit about that. Well, the reason I got into television was I grew up in Sri Lanka where there was no television. But I heard about someone, through a friend whose son had joined a television company…
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Sita Williams on joining Granada
Well, the reason I got into television was I grew up in Sri Lanka where there was no television. But I heard about someone, through a friend whose son had joined a television company and I thought, “Oh, that sounds good. I want to do that.” So anyway, I planned my career in a very…
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Sita Williams talks about working in the drama department
I thought, “Well, I’ve come to Granada to do drama,” and David Plowright was the managing director. So I got an appointment with him and I said, “Actually David, I only came here in order to do drama.” The arrogance of a young person. “And this is my background, I worked in drama at the…
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Sita Williams remembers David Plowright – and getting her P45!
David Plowright was also the head of drama. He was managing director and head of drama. I remember going in one day to complain that my budget wasn’t enough and he said to me, and it was so wonderful. That was Granada at its best. He said, “I’ll give you what you want. Just go.…
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Sita Williams talks about the drama series The Street.
Well, that was Jimmy’s (Jimmy McGovern) idea where we had a street in Salford it turned out and each episode you went behind the door and it centred on the story coming out of that door, that family. And so they were self-contained but you also saw other characters in the street and then we…
Read MorePete Terry talks about how he came to join Granada
I was freelancing in Birmingham, ATV – which no longer exists, of course – in the centre of Birmingham. I got a contract there straight from college. I was in the design department, and I had, I think, a nine-month contract to work on their winter campaign of 1979. So this was 1978. A number…
Read MorePete Terry remembers his early days in Graphics
In those early days, you come in as an assistant graphic designer, or even a junior assistant graphic designer. You always go, or we used to, onto the local news. That would have been Granada Reports. The ITV company has retained that name. That’s to my knowledge, the only real link with the past now.…
Read MorePete Terry describes working on sports programmes
Well, sport then was… and of course, the Northwest as we all know, was a hotbed of football then as it is very much now. I wouldn’t have done it in that first three months, but certainly then in the following year or so. We had been working on local sports programmes. Of course one…
Read MorePete Terry talks about World In Action
I think as a junior for about 18 months, and then you go up to full graphic designer. I’ve got to say, our department, I was one of the youngest going in I think, when I started there 23, 22. The department was made up really, of more early middle-aged people. But a couple of…
Read MorePete Terry on the technical aspects of graphics
Letraset was… in the background, there was this looming coming of electronic graphics we heard about. You’d hear about it and perhaps read articles about it in trade magazines. But that was in the future. That was to happen in 1986, the electronic graphics department started at Granada TV. But when I moved on from…
Read MorePete Terry on the advent of electronic graphics
So the advent of electronic must have caused major ripples within the graphics department? It did. It did for all of us in a way, because we had all… we were all of a certain age. And of course, this is before the mobile phones and before the household PC, household computer. So, we as…
Read MorePete Terry talks about changes in graphics
Yes. And the graphic design department had changed considerably because we had a merger, and I can’t remember when exactly, probably late-1990s, ‘98, ‘97. I can’t remember exactly, with which I’m sure a lot of colleagues will remember when we merged with the BBC to form a kind of production company called 360 Media. So,…
Read MorePete Terry on leaving Granada
I didn’t decide to leave. The writing sadly was on the wall. I took a redundancy, but it was becoming quite evident that finances were playing an important role, and it had become an unrecognisable company in many ways. We were then under the auspicious ruling of, I think, Charles Allen, and I think Gerry…
Read MorePete Terry on his pride for Granada
I’d like to put on record that I was proud to be part of I think Granada, and I think still part of its golden heyday early on. And I was able to work on some great programmes, meeting very interesting people. World in Action, right? I had a great respect for Ray Fitzwalter and…
Read MoreAndrew Quinn
Interviewed by Geoff Moore, 28 March 2019. So Andrew, the early years in your life. You want to tell us a bit where you were brought up and educated, and so on? Right. Well, the very early years, I’m a Scot. I was born on Clydeside in 1937. My father worked in the shipyards. Before…
Read MorePete Terry
Interviewed by Stephen Kelly, 15 May 2019. Okay. All right, Pete. As ever with these things, begin at the beginning. How did you come to join Granada Television? I was freelancing in Birmingham, ATV – which no longer exists, of course – in the centre of Birmingham. I got a contract there straight from college.…
Read MoreClaudia Milne
Interviewed by Stephen Kelly and Judith Jones, 5 November 2015. How did you come to join Granada television? What had you been doing beforehand? I’d really done nothing. I’d been at university, dabbled on the student paper but not very much. But I knew that I didn’t want to be a secretary or a teacher,…
Read MoreDaphne Hughes
Interviewed by Stephen Kelly and Judith Jones, 9 May 2019. Okay. Daphne, let’s start at the beginning. How and when did you come to join Granada Television? 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 Carr,…
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