Anthea Boulton – Granadaland

Anthea Boulton describes joining Granada in 1964

I arrived at Piccadilly Station, Manchester, the day Labour won the 1964 election. “Told you the trains’d run late once they got in” I heard from a voice behind me, but I cared nothing for late trains or election fever. I was on my way to my first proper job: Call Girl at Granada TV. My prospects…

Anthea Boulton recalls working on Scene at 6.30

My real ambition was to write, so the next step was to ask if I could work on the local magazine show, Scene at 6.30. Peter Cuff warned me that researchers on the show came and went like autumn leaves, and that I would need to leave NAATKE and apply to join ACCT, which I…

Anthea Boulton recalls meeting her colleague, David Boulton, who became her husband

Then one day my life changed. David Boulton joined Scene. He had been Sidney Bernstein’s press secretary and a newspaper journalist. On his first day he was told to produce a 4-minute item about the TUC conference for that evening’s programme. The only direction he got was a vague ‘helicals are that direction, 4 headed…

Anthea Boulton on writing her first play – and moving to Coronation Street

It was at this time, with all the confidence of youth, that I decided to try my hand at writing a play. Margaret Morris, head of the Drama department, was friendly and encouraging. I had always admired Anton Chekhov’s short stories and, for my first attempt, I decided to adapt one of his longer ones,…

Anthea Boulton describes the role of the storyline writer on Coronation Street

When Tony Warren wrote his first scripts for the Street, early in 1960, they were scheduled to run for only six episodes. Luckily, someone in management recognised the potential of this ground-breaking idea about a community living in a northern working-class street. Tony was 24 when he wrote it, and he based it on Manchester…

Anthea Boulton on leaving Granada – and the good friends she made there

It was Margaret Morris who commissioned me to write another drama, an adaptation of ‘Into the Whirlwind’ by Eugenia Ginsberg, which told the grim, real-life story of a wife and mother who suffered brutal imprisonment in Stalin’s Russia. However, by the time the script was written, and paid for, Margaret had left Granada. Peter Eckersley,…

Anthea Boulton transcript

GRANADA GIRL – written by Anthea Boulton June 2020 I arrived at Piccadilly station, Manchester, the day Labour won the 1964 election. “Told you the trains’d run late once they got in” I heard from a voice behind me, but I cared nothing for late trains or election fever. I was on my way to…