Judith Jones transcript

Interviewed by Stephen Kelly, 29 January 2021. How did you come to join Granada Television? Well, in 1980, Granada opened a news base at Exchange Flags in the centre of Liverpool, just behind the town hall. Part of the rationale for doing that was that they wanted to ensure that they still had the franchise…

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Judith Jones on leaving Granada

At what point did you decide to leave and why? Okay, so I got married in 1986, and wanted to start a family. And you married someone from Granada!  I married someone from Granada! So there were two of us juggling our careers at Granada. I was really looking forward to being a mother, and…

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Judith Jones on the gender challenges at Granada

What was it like being a woman at Granada? Okay, so at that time, the production assistant, you have to have secretarial skills, you had to be able to type, and to a lesser extent you had to be able to do shorthand. So, because of that skill set, although that was only a small…

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Judith Jones on Coronation Street and Rock Around the Dock

Well, as a PA, which was great, you worked across the whole range of programmes. So you’d do live programmes, you’d do documentaries, you’d do light entertainment, and you’d do drama. And I think drama was seen as the crème de la crème, and certainly the most senior PAs would get the really prestigious dramas,…

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Judith Jones recalls working on World in Action

And you had a stint on World in Action? Yes. All the PAs had to do – it varied, so sometimes it was 12 months, and for me it was six months – so you did six months on World in Action. Again, I suppose in later years, as the crew became smaller, I’m not…

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Judith Jones on the Disappearing World on the French Basque community

Well, also on the strength of me speaking French, another film that I did was a Disappearing World, which was about the Basques in the very south of France. Disappearing World, it was quite an unusual one for the Disappearing World series. So Disappearing World usually went off to remote areas, and with a very…

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Judith Jones on the importance of the PA to Granada Reports

So Granada Reports was the local half-hour live news programme in the evening, generally had two presenters, usually had at least one interview, and would also have lots of film or VT inserts into it. Because it was a live news programme, and because people were, for example, editing their film right up to the…

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Judith Jones describes her training to be a Production Assistant

So the role as a production assistant, it’s always a problem because it gets shortened to PA, and people always think of it as secretarial. It’s basically the organiser of the programme, and one of the good things about being a production assistant is that you are involved in the programme from the pre-production and…

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Judith Jones on how she came to join Granada and her role

How did you come to join Granada Television? Well, in 1980, Granada opened a news base at Exchange Flags in the centre of Liverpool, just behind the town hall. Part of the rationale for doing that was that they wanted to ensure that they still had the franchise in the Granada area; they had been…

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