So you’re back in 1990. What did you do then?
I did a number of shows. I did Remote Control, I remember, with Tony Wilson.
I’d forgotten. Well remembered, that, because nobody’s mentioned that show. It’s a forgotten show.
It’s a forgotten show that we did for Channel 4. And it was an American format, and it was commissioned by Stephen Garrett at that point, or he was just about to leave, I can’t remember. No, he was there, he commissioned it and after that series Stephen Garrett left and I took over from him, with his assistant Bill Hilary. So that was one of the shows I did.
We did another show, a pilot that never happened, which was putting real people… it was a slight precursor of quasi-reality television, where you hoodwinked members of the Great British public, and we did it around the now-defunct Granada Tours. But that didn’t see the light of day, I remember.
And then I became head of entertainment for a couple of years, which I stomped around a bit and didn’t achieve much, and probably wasn’t my finest time.
Why was that? Do you feel that you didn’t get the backing from the bosses or what?
No. I inherited a healthy roster of everything from the Krypton Factor to Stars in Their Eyes, Some You Win. It probably was me. I would have thought, I just probably wasn’t really cut out to do that. And the bizarre thing being Granada is I remember discussing it, saying to Andrea Wonfor who was then the programme controller, oh I’d like to try drama. And this is the good thing about Granada, they didn’t go, that’s absolutely stupid! I remember her saying, well you might as well, you’ve tried everything else! And that was around 1993 or 1994.
