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…
Read MoreJudith 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…
Read MoreJudith Jones on the great things about working at Granada – and the problems
Well, for me, there were some great things about working at Granada, and I still look back on it as a as probably the best job I ever had in terms of my enjoyment of it. I really liked the variety – you never knew what you were going to do. Maybe knew from one…
Read MoreJudith 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…
Read MoreJudith 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,…
Read MoreJudith 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…
Read MoreJudith 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…
Read MoreJudith Jones remembers working on a documentary about the cyclist, Robert Millar
I then started doing some documentaries. So there was probably a sequence of them, I think one of the first documentaries that I did was in 1985. And I was given this, I presume, because I could speak French, and I know that there were probably a couple of PAs who probably weren’t that happy…
Read MoreJudith 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…
Read MoreJudith 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…
Read MoreJudith Jones remembers some of the characters at Granada in Liverpool
The canteen was run by a woman called Helen, but I also remember Joanie-onie. Helen was in charge, but Joanie-onie was the person who served you. I remember food being constantly on tap, but also, if you had a special request, or it was somebody’s birthday, or it was Christmas, we would have special food. …
Read MoreJudith 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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