I started at Granada in 1957 when I would be 25. I’d been, I won’t go into the tormented history of how I got there, but by a series of accidents I started acting in radio just before my fifteenth birthday. I’d acted through school life, and acted through university life and even on a couple of weekends to do a bit of work, mostly radio, whilst I was doing my national service. Came out after 2 years mostly away from the business, I’d done a little television acting, and came out to find that most of the connections that I’d had before, which I wasn’t able to maintain whilst doing service for Queen and Country, albeit only in Regents Park Barracks, driving the staff car for the past year, an exciting experience, I don’t think, a lot of them had faded. Got some work but coming very slowly, just beginning to pick up more resting than working, beginning to pick up but more gaps than not. And at that point I heard from a journalist, well a relation, my brother-in-law had been a journalist, that Granada were looking for a part-time newsreader. He told me he’d worked with Barrie Heads and David Plowright on the Yorkshire Evening News, Post and kept in touch with Barrie… So one Monday I went in to chat with them. It was in the evening and the news had finished a little time before. I sat on the desk and talked to them. They handed me the news script and said would I like to read it and on Tuesday I was the newsreader in a little tiny studio, which is that front lobby that looks onto Globe & Simpson, or what used to be the Globe & Simpson building, little window, tiny studio there.
