Gordon Burns – Granadaland

Gordon Burns biography

Gordon Burns was one of the best-known presenters on Granada Television during the 1970s and 1980s, presenting programmes such as The Krypton Factor, Granada Reports, Reports Politics and the annual party conferences. Gordon came to Granada from Ulster Television where he had covered the troubles over a number of years. During his time at Granada…

Gordon Burns describes how he joined Granada

Before Granada, I was at Ulster Television in Belfast because I come from Northern Ireland, I’m Belfast-born, half Belfast-bred – I moved to England when I was five, and back when I was 13, to Northern Ireland, hence the lack of Northern Ireland accent! But I had worked on local newspapers, then I’d gone on…

Gordon Burns’ special memories of Tony Wilson

I only did Granada Reports, it was about a year and a half when they changed it, they changed every year – they changed the producer, they changed the music, they changed the set – as new guys, thrusting new guys came in to take over, and they decided to go with a single presenter…

Gordon Burns talks about the launch of The Krypton Factor and how it changed his career

Let’s move on to The Krypton Factor. That’s the programme you’re most associated with at Granada. Like many things in one’s life, you get breaks you don’t expect to get – they happen in the most ludicrous way, and they change your life. And my break originally into newspapers in Northern Ireland was in a…

Gordon Burns talks about the emphasis on quality within Granada

What I would say is that there was all that high energy of young people wanting to make a career in television, wanting to shine or wanting to become, if they were researchers, wanting to become producer or director, or indeed a presenter. And that actually gave the programme (Granada Reports)… it might have had…

Gordon Burns remembers working on World In Action in Northern Ireland and the challenges he and his crew faced

The other thing I should mention, which is another one of my pride areas, that World in Action was the great award-winning, again, pioneering investigative programme which the elite, if you like, in news… most journalists’ ambition was to work on World in Action, and it was left, right and centre award-winning, and tremendous investigative…

Gordon Burns remembers Sidney Bernstein – and his attention to cleanliness!

Sidney Bernstein. I remember quite vividly, every so often he used to set off round the building, and he had marching in his wake, an assistant who had a clipboard with paper on it, and Sidney Bernstein would head into an office and so on, and bark out things like, “Wall needs painting!” or whatever,…

Gordon Burns remembers a programme he made about Uri Geller and his powers

One Reports Extra I did was with Uri Geller who had astonished the nation with his spoon-bending, and I wanted to see if he really could bend spoons, and whether he really had telepathy, because he claimed if you thought of a picture, he could probably draw it. So I invited him along and had lunch…

Gordon Burns reflects on the growing power of the unions within Granada in the 1970’s

That was the time when the unions were growing in power, and I think that did lead to a change in situation when the unions were challenging the whole time, and strike action was not necessarily infrequent, but there was one major strike action, and in fact the unions, in my view, got far too…

Gordon Burns recalls the resources that were available to staff working on Granada Reports

It was just Granada Reports when I started – and I was astonished. I’d come from little Ulster television, Belfast – and although we had a major international story on our doorstep night after night, so there was that huge programme, with big interviews to be done, and a very challenging situation, we had bombs…

Gordon Burns recalls the innovative Granada 500 programme at the time of the 1979 General Election

Well, the Granada 500 was one of the best experiences I’ve had in television, certainly with Granada. Granada were this wonderful, pioneering organisation, I’ve talked about their quality demand, they are clearly pioneers of television, even in drama it was pioneering when they actually took on things like Brideshead Revisited and Jewel in the Crown,…

Gordon Burns recalls a very unusual task he had to undertake as a presenter!

Because I had moved away from Granada Reports, I was given this late evening programme called Reports Extra, which was basically pop psychology. We had an audience in the studio, and we did all sorts of things, like we examined one of the senses each week, smell, touch and so on, and we would have…

Gordon Burns describes his exclusive interview with Margaret Thatcher and how she kept a promise to his co-producer

Probably the highlight for me (on Reports Politics) was when I got to interview the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. That was an interesting and strange experience, by the way it came about. My co-producer, David Kemp, who had also worked for World in Action, had made a documentary about Mrs Thatcher when she ran…

Gordon Burns considers whether Granada looked after its employees

You talk very fondly there about Granada Television. Was it a company that cared for its employees? Well, care for its employees, that’s a good question. I think as much as companies do, yes – I think it did. We tended to get whatever we needed to make programmes, so they were fairly liberal with…