Jim Hancock

Jim talks about Cyril Smith and some less successful aspects of journalism

I think on the confessional side, because you had indicated that you might want to talk about my failures as well as my successes. I mean Cyril Smith is somebody I ought to put on the record, because, as I said to a chap who wrote a book about it a few years ago, the…

Jim talks about his colleagues at Granada

Well, Tony, I hope it doesn’t sound too schmaltzy and so on, but I miss him every day. I was not a visitor to The Hacienda, that wasn’t my thing. I didn’t know much about Factory Records and all that sort of scene. But I did know about was if anybody encapsulated the north west,…

Jim Hancock on the night of the long knives

I don’t know how personal you want me to get here, but obviously… Luise Nandy was my producer, and towards the end of my time I used to present specials from the party conferences, and Luise Nandy was my producer. Obviously she was in relationship with Ray Fitzwalter and Luise was in despair, and Ray…

Jim Hancock talks about Gerry Robinson and Charles Allen.

I said to you that I hadn’t enjoyed the sixth floor because David Plowright had all these political connections and didn’t need my services very much. But Charles Allen was not experienced in the political world at all. We’d actually stopped having receptions at party conferences, David Plowright phased them out a bit in my…

Jim on the canteen

You would sit down on a table and you’d be next to someone from World in Action, and somebody else from Brideshead Revisited. I mean, I said I’d talk about that aspect of it. But no, I just think the Old School, which literally was an old school, it was just across from King Street…

Granada and the world of politics

Occasionally I was asked to sort of step out of my role as political editor, particularly when the franchise round came up in, I think it was ‘89 or ‘90. And trying to find out what the government were going to do when they launched that extraordinary auction of franchises, and to try and get…

On Granada’s politics

World in Action was a programme that was based on a radical and general investigation. And I think that that helped to define the personality of the company. But it was broader than that, I mean, you know, we haven’t talked conceptually about Granada, but I think it was, and its enduring image is of…

And not forgetting North Wales

I should’ve mentioned this before, because it was relevant, at the Granada editorial map, they’d include, to some extent, North Wales. They had a lot of viewers in North Wales because a lot of them were Mancs and Scousers who’d moved out to North Wales. In fact, if you went to Mold and places like…

On becoming Political Editor and interviewing Margaret Thatcher.

I remember one of my first interviews was with the great lady, Mrs Thatcher, when she was privatising the water industry. And I said to her, “All they’ll be interested in is making profits,” and she pointed her finger right in my face and said, “Profits? Aren’t Granada Television interested in making profits?” And the…

Jim on covering north west politics

My brief, and it was something that I felt very strongly about, was to report politics in the north west, and that particularly meant local government, as well as what the MPs were doing, but also go to Westminster. I had operated briefly in the BBC under a system where they had a Westminster reporter…

Jim remembers Granada’s Liverpool office and ENG.

Very soon after I joined Granada, I was re-based over in the Albert Dock because – and there was quite a story behind this – Granada was criticised in Liverpool for being very much Manchester orientated, and as you probably know, Liverpool is a proud city and indeed a very interesting city, both culturally and…

Jim Hancock explains how he came to join Granada.

I’d been president of Manchester University Students’ Union. And in the course of that job, I bumped into a chap called Norman Quick, who ran a big Ford car business in the north west. And he’d been made a director of the soon to go on air commercial radio station, Piccadilly Radio. And he said…

Interview with Stephen Kelly and Jim Hancock, June 18 2020 How did you come to join Granada, and what had you been doing beforehand? Well, in the run up to that, I’d been president of Manchester University Students’ Union. And in the course of that job, I bumped into a chap called Norman Quick, who…