Joan Riley – Granadaland

Joan Riley biography

Joan Riley joined Granada Television in 1960 as part-time copy typist working on the local evening news programme. She was the first person in the UK to hear of President Kennedy’s assassination when she picked up a call from the Press Association. After working in local programmes she joined the Promotions Department and then went…

Joan Riley on how she came to be employed at Granada

There was an advert in the Evening News for a fast typist for the Granada Newsroom. I applied and was asked to go for an interview; a typing test. This was 1960. At that time the main building hadn’t been finished, so all the offices were opposite Granada in Quay Street in an old warehouse.…

Joan Riley remembers working in the Promotions Department – and meeting Pat Phoenix

Promotions department; the duty announcer would give a run down of all the programmes for that night and would pick out the special ones, do a few more words on that. And the scriptwriters would write these small scripts out, minute long for the afternoon and evening, and we typed them out. We’d get black…

Joan Riley remembers the variety of performers on ‘Scene at 6.30’

A lot of the performers would come down chatting to us in-between, because we were permanent staff there. One day a little red headed girl, very small, about sixteen, Scottish. She came and was chatting away with us and they decided she would rehearse her song at our end. I was very grateful I had…

Joan Riley remembers the famous incident when Bob Greaves met an elephant

We had a photo call for the zoologist, Desmond Morris, who did a lot of programmes for Granada. There was a photo call for him in Chester zoo, and it was a good turn out, all the journalists, reporters and photographers were there. Each one of them trying to get an exclusive; an exclusive photograph,…

Joan Riley recalls how Granada covered the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963

They decided they were going to have a new magazine called ‘Scene at 6.30’. So the whole of the newsroom was transported to the fifth floor; it was a large studio there. From the lifts you turned right and it was the whole of the floor, a very large area for the directors and researchers…

Joan Riley meets the Beatles

They were going to have a late news bulletin so Joyce and I did split shifts. One week we’d have two days 10-6 and three days 6-11 and then swap round. Promptly at 8 o’clock every night we’d get the empty flask and go to the canteen for refills to keep us going. One night…

Joan Riley remembers a union dispute about appearance fees

It was decided to have ‘Scene’ at 11 o’clock as well. So we all went back to Quay Street side, directly above where the original newsroom had been, a very large area. At the far end was the studio. I don’t know whether you remember it but the studio was partitioned off with a large…

Joan Riley describes her impressions of Granada as a company

Was Granada a paternalistic company? I think so and unfortunately I think the unions, in a way, stopped a lot of that because we used to get two bonuses one in May and one in October. There was one strike so they stopped one bonus and then another strike and they stopped another bonus. They…