Janice Finch – Granadaland

Janice Finch remembers as a nine year old trying to meet the Beatles at Granada

I forgot to mention that I had of course actually breached the walls of Granada television in 1963 as a nine year old when the Beatles were supposed to be appearing live on their Friday night show. It was a summer holiday so it must have been August 1963 and I’d gone with a girl…

Janice Finch on working as a documentary researcher in the 1980’s and her first meeting with Ray Fitzwalter

I did a whole stint for about five years working on network documentaries and I had to work out of London. I worked initially on a programme with Simon Berthon who had worked on ‘World in Action’ and we made this film about desertion amongst airmen in World War Two. That was absolutely fascinating because…

Janice Finch talks about the size of documentary film crews in the 1980s

So my first taste of programmes was helping out one weekend on a mammoth documentary Granada was making about the Liverpool-Everton Milk Cup Final in 1984. That was my first taste of working with a documentary crew and I remember on that occasion there were eight people. Wherever you went filming, even in people’s living…

Janice Finch recalls how she got to work on ‘World In Action’

I’d done this programme I was telling you about on airmen and desertion in World War Two, then I’d worked for eighteen months on a series about how the world was mapped called ‘The Shape of the World’. That sent me all over the world, amazing to think now, and was sponsored by IBM, so…

Janice Finch talks about the shift from film to tape and how it impacted on ‘World In Action’

This was a massive transformation as I said, where before they used to have eight people working on things with film this was now a three-man crew. I should say three person crew but I don’t think there were any camerawomen or sound recordists at the time I worked at Granada. It did mean I was…

Janice Finch recalls her pride in working at Granada

I felt incredibly proud to work there, not least because I had grown up in Manchester, so I’d always seen the building and I was familiar with its programmes. I used to think it made programmes I would want to watch; intelligent programmes. Yes they did the whole gamut of entertainment and drama and so…

Janice Finch on Granada as a company

I always felt that it was small enough so people knew who you were. What I also loved, that even before the Internet and people sending emails to people left right and centre, you could send notes to those in authority. The line of command at Granada was really short. So you could see Denis…

Janice Finch on the importance of Granada TV to the North West

It was such a big deal, the Beatles being there. (in 1963) You did feel, you really did feel at the time that the North and the North West was on its way and Granada was all part of that. Did you see Granada as being important to the North West? Yes, you saw that…

Janice Finch talks about Sidney Bernstein

I had to work on preparing the obituary of Sidney Bernstein at one stage, when I was working at Granada, when he was not well. Immediately we were asked to go and interview people who had been key in his life. I had to read up a great deal about him and how the company…

Janice Finch remembers working on the Channel 4 programme ‘Union World’ made by Granada TV

‘Union World’ was a very good grounding if you wanted to work in current affairs. Obviously it was at a time when trade union politics were very important in Britain. In fact I’d barely started working at Granada when the miners’ strike began. That kind of dominated the time I worked on ‘Union World’, which…

Janice Finch remembers the Granada canteen

I remember standing in the queue at the canteen behind this short bloke and thinking ‘I know you from somewhere’ and as he turned to pay I recognised it was Roger Daltrey. I thought ‘My god, what is he doing here?’ It was the kind of place where you’d be sitting there having your fish…

Janice Finch talks about being a woman working in television

I guess I’ve never ever considered whether or not my gender would hold me back. It never entered into it. Television, compared with other walks of life, has never felt to me like an area in which women couldn’t get ahead. In the time I worked there we had a director of programmes, Andrea Wonfor,…