Arthur Taylor on how he came to join Granada

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 of education, they called it, in Manchester, done my degree in London, came to Manchester to do this postgrad thing and I got an…

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Arthur Taylor recalls the programme On Site

I was a researcher on a programme called On Site. I should have said I was very lucky at the time, because Mike Scott had just been made executive producer of local programmes, and had torn up the old system and wanted to create it in his own image, and completely changed everything. And there…

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Arthur Taylor on the challenges of being a presenter

They persevered with the idea that I should present, which I didn’t want to do. From day one I didn’t want to do it. But I did, because it was experience and because if I hadn’t done it I would have kicked myself for being yellow, you know? So I read the news, I did…

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Arthur Taylor describes producing for the first time

The first series I actually did get round to producing, and looking back it was, there was a thing called Songs from the Two Brewers, which was a folk music series. And I got on very well with Mike. I mean, he could be insufferable, and he was easily distracted. But he was basically a…

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Arthur Taylor on producing the Cinema programme

When I was at university in London, I frittered away my time going to the cinema – I was a member of the National Film Theatre – going to the pub, and playing a lot of jazz. What I didn’t realise was that the time I frittered away became far more useful than the degree!…

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Arthur Taylor on the success of GTV’s gardening programme

The thing about Granada, and I don’t know where it came from, but it was drummed into everybody without it being drummed in, if you know what I mean, it was just in the air, was that Granada would make programmes that would be better than anybody else’s, because they were more interesting, because they…

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Arthur Taylor on the origins of ‘Band of Year’

One of the most interesting things that happened was the whole brass band thing. That only happened… I’d done a series called Out Front. The idea of Out Front was that each programme would be a different form of minority music, but music that had an enthusiastic following. A small but enthusiastic following. So I…

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Arthur Taylor on the impact of brass brands in USA

But the brass band thing was great. I went to America, would you believe? During the course of all this, I met a guy called Bob Burnett, who was an American musical academic who suddenly discovered British brass bands, and he came over here on a sabbatical, and went to every contest including the Granada…

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Arthur Taylor’s memories of Mike Scott

Fantastic enthusiasm. Very creative. I think an absolute top notch interviewer – one of the best. Either one to one, or interviewing a hall full of people, he was terrific. He used to empathise with people, and he wanted to create something different at that time in local programmes, and was willing to take risks…

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Arthur Taylor on the changes at GTV in the late ‘80’s

Towards the end I was doing some directing as well, and I was back on Down to Earth. And I did a film at Southport Flower Show, which is a very old, established, traditional flower show in a big park in Southport, very famous, in August, and it rained. It rained for a whole week…

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