Chris Kelly – Granadaland

Chris Kelly describes how he joined Granada TV

I was with Anglia Television in Norwich and I had gone there straight from… not quite straight and leaving Cambridge, but I taught French for a couple of terms at a very bizarre establishment in Sussex. And joined Anglia, got a job as an announcer initially, did that for about three months, moved over to…

Chris Kelly recalls the enjoyment of Clapperboard

Clapperboard was a movie programme that went out… it became a bit of a moveable feast, but it started at about 4:30 in the afternoon. And it was nominally a children’s programme, although, as you know, Granada took the cinema seriously, and so did we. And I remember doing an hour’s interview with Anthony Quinn,…

Chris Kelly on some of the stars he met on Clapperboard

(It was a) A weekly programme. …. Chiefly Manchester based, but set visits, so we went to Pinewood quite a lot and various other places. We did a spin-off series called Clapperboard North West, in which we went to the places where they filmed very, very early movies, then on the Pennines, westerns they were.…

Chris Kelly on the faith Granada had in its young staff

The other great thing about Granada was they had enormous faith in young people. I mean, I remember once, I had read about a Picasso exhibition in Paris, 16 rooms, and he walked into one of them and allegedly said, “I didn’t paint a single canvas in this room.” Mind you, Picasso was known to…

Chris Kelly’s remembers working with Bill Grundy

I was obviously presenting Scene at 6:30 as it was then called, and within about a week or a fortnight, literally, I was producing a programme called Granada in the North, which went out at 10, 10:30 at night. GIN for short, which turned out to be a rather prescient nickname, because there was a…

Chris Kelly recalls working with James Cameron

I produced the stuff there (in Gibraltar), as I say, with James Cameron. Tell me about that. Well, as I say James… James could sober up enough to write in half an hour what you’d been thinking all week. So he began his piece – I think it was for the Evening Standard, or whichever…

Chris Kelly on his work on World In Action

I worked on World in Action for years. I was the sort of principal commentator sort of thing… well, for one season, Bill and I did the links live in the studio, which was great – although it can’t have been that great because they dropped it! And I didn’t get a credit to begin…

Chris Kelly on ‘Granada man’

I mean, there’s such a thing as Granada Man. Peter Eckersley wrote this wonderful Guide to Granada Man (and woman), although there were no brackets in those days. And it was pugnacious, and it was left leaning, of course. It was very confident. I mean, if somebody said to you, “What do you see yourself…

Chris Kelly on Granada’s geographical & cultural range

When you joined Granada, Yorkshire Television was still part of the… Yes. How did that work? I don’t know. As far as I was concerned… by going out and doing reports in Yorkshire. I remember interviewing Laurence Olivier at the Sheffield Playhouse. One story with Les Woodhead directing, which was a guy who had made…

Chris Kelly’s memories of the Bernsteins

I used to see them around a lot because that was the other great thing about Granada was they ate in the canteen along with us peasants. And so it was important, that, because you’d see them – and you know, honestly they could fire us if they felt like it – but it felt…

Chris Kelly describes his impressions of Denis Forman

Denis, yes. He was a rather strange character. He came down… I remember Peter Eckersley once said that he’d gone up, it was time to renew his contract so he went up to the sixth floor, and when he got there Forman was playing the piano – because he was a great Mozart authority, as…