Bruce Anderson – Granadaland

Bruce Anderson describes his experiences as a gay man working for Granada

I think the reality was that there were some people who were obviously out, but on balance, at that stage, it was not something that you necessarily talked about. Being gay was relatively in the closet, I think. You obviously knew the other gay people because you could possibly have met them socially in bars…

Bruce Anderson describes how he came to join Granada TV

From the age of 17 to the age of 21, I spent four years at Bournemouth and Poole College of Art, which is now part of Bournemouth University. I primarily went there I suppose, because I wanted to be a photographer, or I thought I wanted to be a photographer. While I was there, I…

Bruce Anderson explains the 10 hour break agreement and gives a specific example of its impact

The agreement was you would normally have a 12-hour break between two turns of duty. If you had a modest amount of notice, that could be cut to a10-hour break between two turns of duty. If you didn’t get a 10-hour break, when you started work again on the next turn of duty, at…

Bruce Anderson on his role as a member of the Granada Forum

So I was elected a councillor about 1971, and continued until 1976, and in 1976, I wasn’t re-elected, the ward… there was a change in general politics, and I was not re-elected, only by a handful of votes, which was very irritating! So I came back to work full-time, you might say, and almost immediately,…

Bruce Anderson recalls how Granada management were supportive of his role as a Labour councillor

When I came to Manchester, I lived just up the road in Birch Lane, I joined the local Labour Party, as you do, or as I did. And of course, it was a bit strange in reality for anybody working on the studio floor to be a Labour activist – it just didn’t happen. People…

Bruce Anderson remembers working on Coronation Street in the early days of his career

You had nine months to see if you fitted in, I think they called it a probationary period, and kept your nose clean, didn’t shout and didn’t make yourself a nuisance, and then after that nine months, you then became a first year, second year, third year, fourth year, fifth year camera operator – so…

Bruce Anderson recalls how he became the national president of the ACTT union

So you had become heavily involved in the union. I was, sure. 1979, I think some of us were cheesed off with the way the negotiations had gone on, and of course the ACTT, although we had Alan Sapper, the left-winger, as general secretary, he didn’t really get involved in much of it until about…

Bruce Anderson talks about the long strike of 1979 at Granada and how it was resolved

All through that period of the late 70s, there was an unsettled atmosphere, which culminated in 1979 with this long strike of three months, which started – if my memory is correct – around the issue of new technology. It started in London with a few people going on strike, I think, at Thames, and…

Bruce Anderson talks about the impact of TV-AM on independent television as a closed shop

Well, I think what happened was, for a long time we had the company over a barrel because we had a closed shop. Once the Thatcher government in effect had dropped that by the 80s and we didn’t have that, and I think Andrew Quinn said we were going to get our own back after…