Highlights of my career, I suppose the Lawrence Olivier plays, there were six, and each camera crew got one play. That was a time when there were six crews, and there were seven people on each crew, we had 42 people in the camera department. I think there are four permanent jobs now at Granada.…
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The Stables Theatre
I’ve got to mention The Centre Players. They were a group of Granada employees who’d got together to perform at The Stables Theatre in the mid-‘70s. I produced two productions there with the Players: Old Time Musical 1974 and the following year, Whatever Happened to Pantomime? Peter Moran was our magician and the barbershop quartet…
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Remembering Sidney Bernstein and David Plowright
I’ll always remember Sidney doing his rounds and looking for dust. Sidney just used to just show up without warning, so everything had to be kept neat and tidy. In the ‘70s and ‘80s, management were a delight. They didn’t always agree with you, but they always listened. Until we won the franchise and Alex…
Read MoreJohn on taking redundancy
I had applied once previously and they said, “No, no, no, you’re too valuable. We can’t let you go. We want you to stay.” The attitude changed completely once I became shop steward and became a troublemaker. So they decided that, “Well, maybe we can let you go.” I said, “Yes, but I want a…
Read MoreJohn remembers Jim Grant (aka Lee Child) and some awkward times as Shop Steward
Right, so we move on now to I was deputy steward for the union BECTU under Jimmy Grant in 1994, when Jimmy was Shop Steward. Now, you probably know Jim better as Lee Child. So, I was deputy steward under Jim from 1994 to 1997, and I remember Jim telling me as a transmission controller,…
Read MoreJohn on becoming a lighting director
In 1980 I got my own crew. Or ‘79, ‘80, I got my own crew, with certain people on it, and it took me until 1988 to get a job as a trainee lighting director. I applied three times. Well, the first time they wanted two, because they were going to train new lighting directors…
Read MoreJohn’s early years at Granada
I started on October 4, 1964. Tom Price was the head of cameras, and I was put on Les Chatfield’s crew. Les, at the time, was still working as a senior cameraman. Shortly afterwards, he had back problems, and he was taken off and he was put on a director’s course, which was really good…
Read MoreJohn talks about how he always wanted to be a film cameraman
I always wanted to be a film cameraman. Not a television cameraman, a film cameraman. When I was about 9 or 10 years old, I had a shed at the end of the garden that my parents used to put me in, and I had a projector and 30 large reels of 9.5mm films, and…
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