An absolutely extraordinary man. A renaissance man. Really? Oh, just a marvellous man. Absolutely marvellous. I’m sure he could be different from being marvellous. If he hadn’t done what he does, or if he didn’t manage to get the film we all wanted to get… but a man of so many parts, that was so…
Read MoreBrian Moser on the challenges of filming in remote and challenging conditions
So, did anybody ever get ill? And then what would you do if that was the case? On Disappearing World? Yes. Or were you all so fit and healthy that it didn’t matter? No but flu-type illness, yes, it could knock you out for three days, so who knows, how to deal with a virus……
Read MoreBrian Moser on his first Disappearing World in Colombia
Yes, I will. The Last of the Cuiva. And that… well, the cameraman was Ernie Vincze, and Bruce White was the sound recordist. Dai Vaughan, again, was the editor. It wasn’t the first one we shot; we quite often shot these films three at a time, as it were. Well, I did. I got three…
Read MoreBrian Moser talks about covering the death of Che Guevara and those famous photographs
Every morning when we came into the World in Action office, or certainly I remember doing this, we read the papers, we read the magazines. I’d obviously always been attached to Latin America since I went off first expedition as a geologist, and I found in the Times a tiny little citation saying that it…
Read MoreBrian Moser on his first film as a producer in Basutoland and a lucky escape
The first film I actually produced myself with an experienced crew was a film we made in Basutoland, it was then called Basutoland. In fact, it’s now Lesotho. And Verwoerd, the South African premier, had just died. Actually, I think he died in parliament. And so World in Action sent me out to get reactions…
Read MoreBrian Moser describes an early World in Action
An interesting World in Action I did then, it was probably before your time. The Americans had one of these special sort of spy aeroplanes that were continuously going around up in the sky, very, very high up. And I don’t know how we got to know this, but it had to be refuelled, and…
Read MoreBrian Moser on one of the first important films he made at Granada about the effects of smoking
Well, I made some very interesting and quite an important film then, with a director called Ken Ashton. And it was a one-hour, maybe it was more even, maybe 70 minutes or something, special on bronchitis and its prevalence in the north, in the industrial areas, but all over Britain. And Ken knew what he…
Read MoreBrian Moser transcript
Interview with Brian Moser on June 22, 2020 So just kind of start at the very beginning. Tell me, what year did you join Granada? Can you remember? 1964. Right. And you were a geologist by training or by, in terms of your academic background. So how did you get to join the television company?…
Read MoreThe loss of World in Action
It’s obviously a matter of great regret that that sort of journalism does not exist on television now, and it’s one of those things that people don’t miss until its gone, and even then there’s not a moment where people take to the streets, it’s a sort of oh god, even now many, many years…
Read MoreStuart Prebble on leaving Granada
I was subsequently appointed to a lot of jobs – much after I left Granada – that were further and further away from programmes, and more involved wearing a suit. But it was a period where 15 companies were becoming five and five were becoming three, and three was becoming one, and it is absolutely…
Read MoreStuart Prebble on Gerry Robinson
I really liked Gerry in particular, a very, very affable, charming man, but he once said to me ‘my job is very simple. I say to you I want another 10%’, and I say Gerry, I gave you another 10% last year and the year before, there just isn’t another 10%. And he said, ‘when…
Read MoreThe new regime at Granada
Simon Albury and Simon Berthon and lots of our producers were involved in the Campaign for Quality Television. We had a number of meetings with the broadcasting minister at the time, and they gradually introduced a quality threshold over which the people had to pass in order for their bid to qualify, which of course…
Read MoreStuart Prebble talks about World in Action
Honestly, I thought Granada was an utterly brilliant company to work for, undoubtedly the best place I have ever worked and of course, its only in subsequent years, you realise how lucky you were when you see what happened to ITV and pretty much everywhere else over the years. I think we knew we were privileged.…
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Stuart Prebble Transcript
Interview with Stuart Prebble on February 1, 2023 Before we get on to Granada Television, tell me about your life pre-Granada. I joined the BBC journalists training scheme from the University of Newcastle, and at that time they ran a graduate training scheme and a 2 year course in shorthand and local government – very…
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Anna Ford on leaving Granada
I was headhunted by the BBC. It was 1976, and a funny man turned up and said, “Would you have tea with me in the Midland hotel?” And I said, “What for?” And he said, “Well, I want to talk to you about the BBC.” He said, “Desmond Wilcox wants you to be on a…
Read MoreRemembering Dennis Forman and the canteen
I think the thing about Denis was, it was partly that he took his jacket off and he had red braces, and he rolled his sleeves up. And also he would always come and sit beside you in the canteen. The canteen was one of the great levellers. And it’s not true of other companies…
Read MoreGranada’s left-wing politics
The Bernsteins were businessmen who rented out television sets. And yet, there was this wonderful socialism which, given that we were growing out of the dull fifties where people were still touching their caps, and the establishment was still in charge. And you had MacMillan saying, “I don’t know what young people get up to…
Read MoreAnna Ford remembers working on Reports Action
One of the programmes we did was called Reports Action, where they actually advertise children for adoption, but they weren’t the obvious babies. These were teenagers who nobody wanted. They were teenagers with difficult backgrounds who had been in multiple homes, who had got all sorts of problems. And what we did was interview the…
Read MoreLife on Granada Reports
I started being on Granada Reports, and being in the newsroom, which was a fascinating place. Now, in the newsroom, you had to be in there by eight in the morning and you had, in theory, to have three stories that you could suggest to the meeting that hadn’t come from the newspapers. And so…
Read MoreAnna Ford describes how she came to join Granada
I taught for the Open University in social science as staff tutor for a time, but by this time my marriage was coming to an end, and I wanted to get a divorce. So we decided the first one to get a job out of Belfast would leave. And so I left with a suitcase…
Read MoreAnna Ford on her Manchester background
I knew Manchester quite well, because my mother comes from Manchester and she was in Manchester high school. And my grandfather was a doctor in Urmston. And all my grandfather’s brothers were either born in Pendlebury, Wigan or Salford. They were to do with coal mines and Pendlebury. In fact, one of them grew out…
Read MoreAnna Ford transcript
Interview with Anna Ford on January 12, 2022. How did you come to join Granada Television? I was a student at Manchester University between 1963 and 1967. Although I did stay on and do another course after that. And because I was president of the Students’ Union between ‘66 and ‘67, and that was the…
Read MorePriscilla John on what made Granada so distinctive
What do you think made Granada so distinctive at that time? I think they gave you confidence. It was distinctive, because we worked on really good quality shows. We did experimental stuff as well. We worked across the board, so we understood documentary making. We understood religious programmes. We understood What the Papers Say. We…
Read MorePriscilla John on casting for Jewel in the Crown
So Jewel in the Crown comes along. Oh, yes. So then they needed a second casting director, and I hopped on to help Susie Bruffin. She was the lead casting director. And they hadn’t cast Daphne Manners. And I was working with Susan Wooldridge on a comedy called Repertory, about a repertory company. And we…
Read MorePriscilla John remembers the 1979 ITV strike
Tell me about the strike. A lot of us were badly paid, and there was a section of us, and I still can’t remember the term, what was the term? It was called the thinking in the bath time that designers, casting directors… none of us earned overtime. Production designers, costume designers. We didn’t earn…
Read MorePriscilla John on why she thought Granada was a left-wing company
We were a very left-wing company. Tell me about that. Because obviously, people have said that, particularly when we’ve talked to people who’ve been involved in World in Action or political programmes, but it’s interesting what you’re saying, it infused into drama as well. Yes, most definitely. We were all left-wing. We were all Labour…
Read MorePriscilla John on the responsibility for casting Crown Court
You had to do Crown Court. Oh, my God, Crown Court was another huge learning curve. And the actors, we used to cast them two weeks in advance, and we get the most brilliant, brilliant casts for that. There used to be long lists of actors who wanted to be the judge, or wanted to…
Read MorePriscilla John describes casting for the docu-drama Three Days in Szczecin on the Polish shipyard workers’ strike in 1971
I did the extras on Three Days in Szczecin. We needed a load of Polish dock workers, so I went around all the Polish clubs in Whalley Range, and everywhere, gathering up the Polish… who could sing the Polish national anthem, or whatever it was. It was one of those historic moments where, one by…
Read MorePriscilla John on casting Wood and Walters
Tell me a bit about Wood & Walters and how that came about? Well, that came about because I had cast Happy Since I Met You. And that was another umbrella screenplay. It came under the umbrella title of Screenplay. This was directed by Baz Taylor, written by Victoria Wood. This is one of her…
Read MorePriscilla John describes casting for All for Love with Frank Finlay
I did All for Love with Frank Finlay and a very young Rupert Graves. All for Love was under the PBS umbrella of several plays. I can’t remember the names of all of them. But All for Love, this one was directed by Rob Knights, who was fantastic. It was produced by Roy Roberts. And…
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