Interviewed by Stephen Kelly, 29 January 2021. How did you come to join Granada Television? Well, in 1980, Granada opened a news base at Exchange Flags in the centre of Liverpool, just behind the town hall. Part of the rationale for doing that was that they wanted to ensure that they still had the franchise…
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 MoreJane 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 MoreAndre 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 MoreJim Grant – Transcript
Interviewed by Stephen Kelly , 12 May 2020 So let’s start about how you came to join Granada. Well, for so many of these answers, it’s important to remember it was a long time ago. My first day of work was September 12, 1977, which was so different in every imaginable way, especially for young people.…
Read MoreTim Sullivan
Interviewed by Stephen Kelly, 28 April 2020. Tim, let’s begin at the beginning. How did you come to join Granada? What was the interviewing process like? Well, I initially… funnily enough, I thought the other day about this, actually. The first person that I met from Granada was a chap called Jerry Hagan, who was…
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 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…
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,…
Read MoreNorma Percy
Interviewed by Geoff Moore, 3 April 2019. So Norma, can I just ask you to just tell us a bit about your earlier years and background education, and so on? Right. I grew up in New York, and when it came to go to university, I wanted to get as far as possible from my…
Read MoreDorothy Byrne
Interview conducted by Stephen Kelly, September 20, 2015. How did you come to join Granada? I was working on the Northern Echo and I saw an advert in the Guardian for a researcher. I applied, and I found it very interesting that, when I think back, that this was an advert for the Guardian for…
Read MoreJules Burns
Interviewed by Geoff Moore, 6 December 2018. Before Granada, just tell us a bit about your background. What was your education, and where did you live? I was born here, emigrated to Canada, my family emigrated to Canada. I came back when I was five. Went to prep school and then to Haberdashers’ school and…
Read MoreVanessa Kirkpatrick
Pre-Granada I was a Politics graduate Leeds University. 1978. Professor Ralph Miliband was my tutor and also Head of Department. David and Ed came in a couple of times. To fund my MSc course at University of Bradford, I managed to get a Research Assistant post with the Lucas Aerospace Shop Stewards Combine Committee. Thousands…
Read MoreJon Savage
Interviewed by Stephen Kelly and Judith Jones, 11 July 2016. JJ: So let’s start at the beginning. When did you join Granada and how come you joined Granada? I actually joined Granada in April 1979. But I went for the researcher’s board in November ‘78 and my position was that I was living at home…
Read MoreJacki Turner
JACQUELINE MAJORIE STOTT/HARDING/TURNER – GRANADA MEMORIES This is a blog from Jacki Up to 1965 I’d been working as a secretary in an engineering company in Blackburn. I nearly married a colleague but then realised in a panic that I’d done nothing with my life and was not ready to settle down so I took…
Read MoreChris Kelly
Interviewed by Stephen Kelly and Judith Jones, 19 May 2017. Let’s start. Chris, at the beginning. Where were you before Granada Television and how did you come to join Granada Television? I was with Anglia Television in Norwich and I had gone there straight from… not quite straight and leaving Cambridge, but I taught French…
Read MoreBrian Lapping
Interviewed by Geoff More, 1 November 2018. So before we get onto the Granada time, can you tell us a bit about your background? Well, I was born in 1937. So during the war we were shipped out of London and went to various places in the country to live and got rather well educated,…
Read MoreChris Kerr
Chris Kerr, Granadaland notes, blog Joining Granada was for me a question of being in the right place at the right time. I had started life as a trainee vision mixer at Thames tv followed by a three years as a researcher on the children’s programme Magpie. I had wanted to try life outside telly…
Read MoreClaire Lewis
Interviewed by Stephen Kelly, 1 November 2017. Let’s start at the beginning, Claire. How did you come to join Granada Television? I was a newspaper reporter on the Rotherham Advertiser, believe it or not, in Yorkshire where I lived at the time. South Yorkshire. I had changed my career – I was reluctantly a primary…
Read MoreTrevor Hyett
Interviewed by Stephen Kelly and Judith Jones, 9 March 2017. Let’s talk first about how you came to join Granada. Okay. Basically, I knew Gus MacDonald socially. And I was working for the TV Times and persuaded the features editor – I was doing the billings for the London region, you know, ‘7:00: Crossroads’ kind…
Read MoreLuise Fitzwalter
Interviewed by Stephen Kelly and Judith Jones, 3 May 2017. How did you come to join Granada Television? What was the process of interviewing? Well, we moved moved to Manchester because my then husband Deepak Nandy became the deputy chief executive of the Equal Opportunities Commission, which had just been set up. And as a…
Read MoreArthur Taylor
Interviewed by Stephen Kelly and Judith Jones, 10 May 2017. How did you come to join Granada? What had you been doing before that? I was teaching. I was lecturing in further education colleges. I did have a slight connection with Granada in the very, very early days. When I was doing my post-graduate certificate…
Read MoreThelma McGough
Interviewed by Stephen Kelly, 10 August 2017. Let’s start with your initial contact with Granada. Well, long before I joined I was very familiar with the building, and a lot of the staff before I actually became employed there. In the late 60s, I’d done a fashion show with a friend of mine, we were…
Read MoreKim Horton
Interviewed by Stephen Kelly, 14 October 2017. Let’s start at the beginning. When did you join Granada, and how did you come to join Granada? I think I should start by saying that I grew up in Australia, and probably had not much of an idea about what Granada stood for and what sort of…
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