There were two aspects to it. Firstly, there’s Granada as a working environment, and secondly, there’s Granada’s reputation, I suppose, as a television company. Firstly, compared with other companies I’ve worked for, before and since, during my time at Granada, I can own only describe the environment as being friendly and comradely. There was of…
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Anne McGarry on how Granada extended its programming in 1964
Now, in the autumn of 1964, Granada as well as the transmitting Scene At 6.30 began to really emphasise its commitment to the North of England introducing what it called its Granada in the North concept and this involved two or three minutes of newsy features which were meant to supplement or replace the continuity…
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Anne McGarry on Granada’s Graduate Training Scheme, launched in 1963
During 1963, Granada set up its Granada Graduate Training Programme. There were about a dozen young men, I think. I know there were men, I can only remember one young woman. As part of their training to find out what particular talents they had, they were assigned to a variety of programmes including the Northern…
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Anne McGarry’s memories of Bob Greaves joining Granada
He (Bob Greaves) came to Granada, he replaced Terry Dobson as news editor. I think he was about 30 years old, although he was married and he had two children he gave me the impression of being a little older and more mature for his age. He was a lovely and pleasant and down to…
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Anne McGarry on a typical day on Northern Newscast in the 1960’s
At the beginning, it was called Northern Newscast and it was a five-minute… sometimes it was little bit longer, sometimes they might give you six or seven minutes. You just had to take what they scheduled you on. So, my job description was that of secretary to the news editor, but the setup in the…
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Anne McGarry’s memories of David Plowright
David Plowright was the news editor. He joined the company two years before. I had no idea what he’d eventually become, of course. And he was a 30-year-old man who was very energetic and confident, I’m even tempted to say charismatic. He was a friendly, no-nonsense type of a guy, who insisted on first name…
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Anne McGarry describes the other members of the news team in the 1960s
The assistant news editor was Terry Dodson, he came from the Daily Express. He took over from David Plowright as news editor in 1960. It was him who was on duty the night Kennedy was assassinated. He was the first person who heard from the Press Association in London and passed it onto Barry Heads…
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Anne McGarry describes the type of news stories Granada used to cover
Well, because of the very nature of news every day, every day was slightly different. There was a whole range of stories but you did, after a while, tend to categorise them. They would be the death and disaster ones, people hurt or killed in road accidents, fires, or at work or explosions, etc. Then…
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Anne McGarry on two big stories – the Moors Murders and the assassination of President Kennedy
One of the biggest national stories we had to deal with was the Moors Murders, I remember. I think it must’ve been 1965. I was manning the newsroom one lunch hour and the others were having lunch in the canteen, and I got a phone call from our freelance cameraman who said he’d got a…
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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 finishing, or writing up, a doctorate at Oxford and worrying about what might have…
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Andre Singer recalls the first Disappearing World programmes that he worked on
Well, it was odd at the beginning because we were contracted as anthropologists, as consultants almost, for the film, not as filmmakers. And it was a research contract. I mean, it was a straightforward research contract that I had, but the role was to find the stories, help set them up, and be the anthropologist.…
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Andre Singer describes his director’s training
I then got frustrated and said, “I really want to make these myself.” You know, I’ve now learnt enough about what it takes to want to make these kinds of films rather than just keep feeding another director each time. And unlike Chris, who went straight into directing because he had done current affairs and…
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Andre Singer explains why the Disappearing World programme stopped in 1977
I moved from Disappearing World, having been a researcher on Disappearing World to being a director on local programmes, to being then a director on World in Action, because at that time, then there was a lull in what was happening on Disappearing World. Then I went back to work for Brian on Disappearing World,…
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Andre Singer on Denis Forman’s support for Disappearing World – and a lost archive
In 1974, we put together a little brochure of about nine films, the first nine films in the series. Denis wrote the introduction to this, and it was very much explaining why he did it and how he supported Brian, what went on. It’s a two-page introduction. It was very nice, and he touched on…
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Andre Singer on the reaction of other anthropologists to Disappearing World
You’d come from an academic background, and I wondered what your fellow academics made of Disappearing World? Oh, they hated it! Initially. It was seen as populous television then. I mean, it’s changed dramatically ever since, and now it’s almost a staple in every anthropology department around the country. That change has been quite phenomenal,…
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Andre Singer recalls one of his most memorable Disappearing World experiences
The original Mursi film. And at that time, I was then told, that was my research era, I was then told, “Okay, you’ve got to get us…” David Turton was our anthropologist advisor, “Get us to these Mursi. Find some transport from Addis Ababa.” So as a sort of naive researcher, off I went and…
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Andre Singer on taking over the role of series editor for Disappearing World – and then leaving Granada
Well, it was different for me. Brian (Moser) had the wonderful sort of patronage and support of Denis and basically, I think things were challenging but much easier at that time. By the time I took over, we had, besides those union problems which I described, Disappearing World was no longer… it had been going…
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Andre Singer recalls the challenges in making Disappearing World
Were there any countries that you couldn’t get access to? Was there anywhere that you wanted to film but for various reasons you couldn’t? Or was it always usually quite straightforward? Yes, I was a bit stymied with my own area of interest, which was Iran. And I’d done my fieldwork in Iran, and I…
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Andre Singer on the value of Disappearing World to Granada’s reputation
It was hugely respected because it was nominated for BAFTAs every year, 75 to 78. It got one. One series BAFTA, series award, one year. I can’t remember which year that was. And so, do you think it was a film that… I mean, there was a stage when Granada was being touted as the…
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Jim Grant describes the role of a Transmission Controller
The structure of ITV back then was, any one day of the week, because London had two companies – Thames during the week and London Weekend from Friday night through Sunday night – there were 15 companies in total, therefore, but 14 on the air at any one time, of which five were majors and…
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Jim Grant on some underhand tactics against management – and leaving Granada
By about 1993, early in 1993, which is when the Gerry Robinson and Charles Allen takeover really happened, they were getting super serious and super vindictive about the struggle for control, really. It was the old world versus the new world. The old world, where I started, had this assumption that, “Yes, we’re all in…
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Jim Grant talks about his writing career as Lee Child
I should have said also that it shouldn’t surprise people that I’ve never written anything before, because most writers… I mean, a lot of writers, sure, from seven years old, they’ve got like exercise books and they’ll draw little compositions in or whatever. But fundamentally you don’t do anything. What you do is read. You…
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Jim Grant’s initial impressions of Manchester
I was very aware of joining something that was changing, moving away from the past. That Manchester talking truth to London thing, was starting… it was very 50s and it dissipated in the 60s. And it was on the way out in the 70s. The idea that Britain was so regionally divided, but it was…
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Jim Grant talks about how he came to join Granada TV
I just loved entertainment. I loved the idea of putting on a show, that collaboration, that sort of intense relationship with other creative people. I’d always been exhilarated by that. So, I knew there was no question in my mind, I wanted to work in the field of entertainment. Theatre seemed, to me, to be,…
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Jim Grant describes some difficult moments as a transmission controller
It was a job where you sort of sadly hoped that something bad would happen that day, because that’s… because of the structure, big events were few and far between. I remember I started out as a trainee assistant, as we said. And when I finished my training, I was an assistant, and then I…
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Jim Grant remembers the unions at the start of his career at Granada
Many things by coincidence from the beginning of my career to the end and were a progression. And those 18 years were really an arc for the union. It started out when I joined, it was absolutely all powerful. It was an old-fashioned traditional trade union, a fascinating thing actually, because fundamentally the structure and…
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Jim Grant remembers the Granada company as a family
I walked in there as a new trainee, and my boss was David Black, head of presentation. And his boss was Joyce Wooller, who had a seat on the board, reporting to the board chairman who I think, at that point, was Cecil Bernstein, maybe Sydney, maybe. Maybe David Plowright was effectively the top guy,…
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Jim Grant on how Granada began to change
The old days were great at Granada, especially because, as I said earlier, Granada had been this brave documentary producer. But I sensed when I got there that they were getting a little weary of that, a little scared of it. The British Steel episode, which I’m certain the archive covers extensively, have been… you…
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Jim recalls his long working hours at Granada
If we were properly staffed five and five – you know, five pairs of people – if we were properly staffed, it was a relatively okay, sort of around about a 37-hour week, and antisocial hours of course, but not too bad. And we had, what they called notional weekends, so that your weekend might…
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Jim Grant describes how he became more involved in the ACTT union
So yes, the union situation was super formal, and the committee meetings were all run to Robert’s rules of order, super formal, proper minutes, all of that kind of thing. I was used to that culture from having grown up in Birmingham, but I did love the north west flavour on it. Like I say,…
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