I was obviously presenting Scene at 6:30 as it was then called, and within about a week or a fortnight, literally, I was producing a programme called Granada in the North, which went out at 10, 10:30 at night. GIN for short, which turned out to be a rather prescient nickname, because there was a…
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Chris Kerr on the work of the Granada Foundation
After a few months I was invited, in terms that didn’t invite a refusal, to take responsibility for the Granada Foundation. Kathy Arundale has given a concise summary of the Foundation’s history and work. It had been run up to then by Leslie Diamond the General Manager but he was retiring and, given my background…
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Thelma McGough on GTV as a caring company
I found them to be very caring of their employees. I always refused a staff contract – foolishly, in hindsight – because it came with the pension and I didn’t think I would live long enough to have a pension, and I didn’t want to think about it. And here I am, two months off…
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Arthur Taylor on the origins of ‘Band of Year’
One of the most interesting things that happened was the whole brass band thing. That only happened… I’d done a series called Out Front. The idea of Out Front was that each programme would be a different form of minority music, but music that had an enthusiastic following. A small but enthusiastic following. So I…
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Chris Kelly recalls working with James Cameron
I produced the stuff there (in Gibraltar), as I say, with James Cameron. Tell me about that. Well, as I say James… James could sober up enough to write in half an hour what you’d been thinking all week. So he began his piece – I think it was for the Evening Standard, or whichever…
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Thelma McGough on LWT and the legacy of Granada
In hindsight I’ve realised that what Granada gave me was the ability to be able to thrive in all sorts of different situations that I might not be qualified to do or not. But that really was invaluable when I came to move to produce Blind Date. I just realised your instincts are so honed…
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Arthur Taylor on the impact of brass brands in USA
But the brass band thing was great. I went to America, would you believe? During the course of all this, I met a guy called Bob Burnett, who was an American musical academic who suddenly discovered British brass bands, and he came over here on a sabbatical, and went to every contest including the Granada…
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Chris Kelly on his work on World In Action
I worked on World in Action for years. I was the sort of principal commentator sort of thing… well, for one season, Bill and I did the links live in the studio, which was great – although it can’t have been that great because they dropped it! And I didn’t get a credit to begin…
Read MoreArthur Taylor on a secret mission for World In Action
Going back a long way to Songs from the Two Brewers, one of the people who emerged from that I thought was a tremendous talent was Ralph McTell. In fact, that series was the first time that anyone had seen or heard Streets of London, would you believe? And again, I went to Scott and…
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Chris Kelly on ‘Granada man’
I mean, there’s such a thing as Granada Man. Peter Eckersley wrote this wonderful Guide to Granada Man (and woman), although there were no brackets in those days. And it was pugnacious, and it was left leaning, of course. It was very confident. I mean, if somebody said to you, “What do you see yourself…
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Arthur Taylor’s memories of Mike Scott
Fantastic enthusiasm. Very creative. I think an absolute top notch interviewer – one of the best. Either one to one, or interviewing a hall full of people, he was terrific. He used to empathise with people, and he wanted to create something different at that time in local programmes, and was willing to take risks…
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Chris Kelly on Granada’s geographical & cultural range
When you joined Granada, Yorkshire Television was still part of the… Yes. How did that work? I don’t know. As far as I was concerned… by going out and doing reports in Yorkshire. I remember interviewing Laurence Olivier at the Sheffield Playhouse. One story with Les Woodhead directing, which was a guy who had made…
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Chris Kelly’s memories of the Bernsteins
I used to see them around a lot because that was the other great thing about Granada was they ate in the canteen along with us peasants. And so it was important, that, because you’d see them – and you know, honestly they could fire us if they felt like it – but it felt…
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Arthur Taylor on the changes at GTV in the late ‘80’s
Towards the end I was doing some directing as well, and I was back on Down to Earth. And I did a film at Southport Flower Show, which is a very old, established, traditional flower show in a big park in Southport, very famous, in August, and it rained. It rained for a whole week…
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Chris Kelly describes his impressions of Denis Forman
Denis, yes. He was a rather strange character. He came down… I remember Peter Eckersley once said that he’d gone up, it was time to renew his contract so he went up to the sixth floor, and when he got there Forman was playing the piano – because he was a great Mozart authority, as…
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Trevor Hyett describes how he joined Granada TV
Basically, I knew Gus MacDonald socially. And I was working for the TV Times and persuaded the features editor – I was doing the billings for the London region, you know, ‘7:00: Crossroads’ kind of thing, and I persuaded the features editor that it’s important to have a feature on World in Action because they…
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Trevor Hyett describes the impact of Granada Reports when he was a presenter
So I would present it most often with Tony …. and with Bob quite a lot as well, only very occasionally with Gordon, and I presented later with the woman who became my girlfriend, who was Anna Ford. She and I presented it. And the mail we got was… just teasing, yes, kind of, “Good…
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Trevor Hyett on Granada and the North
I think to work for Granada you had to buy into the non-metropolitan attitude, and that was a source of great pride as well actually. It wasn’t just a northern thing about ‘soft southerners’ or anything clichéd of that sort, it was, we are a distinct culture actually, and Sidney knew that, even though he…
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Trevor Hyett on introducing Ted Heath to George Harrison
And another great historic moment was in 1977, when Tony had just finished and finished interviewing George Harrison and I was about to interview Ted Heath. Ted Heath then long… I mean, this is now three years since he lost those two elections in 1974, and this was his first book I think, the one…
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Trevor Hyett remembers interviewing Muhammad Ali
My four years – 1974-1978 – with Granada Reports are still the best years of my working life. There are many highlights. One was a half-hour interview with Muhammad Ali in 1975. He was promoting a book, an autobiography, and I had to go down to ITN in Wells Street so do it, at three…
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Trevor Hyett has fond memories of his colleagues
Bob Greaves was wonderful. I used to sit and marvel as how he could do that job with such a naturalness and a relaxedness, and that he knew enough about so much to conduct any kind of interview with any kind of person for local news. Tony, of course, was just at such a… Tony…
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Trevor Hyett on a couple of programmes from his later years at GTV
In the 80s I went back… while I was on the road with Mike Harding, I was contacted by Muriel Young, who was the head of children’s and related stuff. She was responsible for the Bay City Rollers, if you remember. And she… I sang on a few of the programmes called Songbook, and in…
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Trevor Hyett on working on C4’s Union World
I only stopped working on it (On the Market) because one of my favourite programmes asked me to go join them as a reporter, which was Union World, and I was a big supporter of Gus (Macdonald), and very proud of the fact that I knew the man who introduced two very important programme to…
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Trevor Hyett on what he enjoyed most about Granada
Granada is the place that gives me the biggest and strongest and deepest feelings of satisfaction and pride, and that will remain the case. The importance of the social life, I vaguely mentioned that. I think it was crucial actually. But I got the sense that it was… I was trying to say earlier, that…
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Trevor Hyett defines ‘Granadaland’
The thing I liked about Granada generally was its non-metropolitan attitude and that’s what I think gave us distinctiveness was the fact that Sidney started off in the very beginning, “We will not be London-based, we will never be London-based.” I had a little office in Golden Square but essentially Granada was Manchester, much to…
Read MoreTrevor Hyett on trade unions and what he was paid
I was in the NUJ; I’d been in the NUJ for a long time, since I was 21 when I was editor of that paper I mentioned earlier. The ACTT of course were the union with the muscle, and I always found actually… Gus would take the mickey out of us because every now and…
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Long after Tonight is all over: me and O. J. Simpson by Mark Gorton
The news that O. J. Simpson has been granted parole after serving nine years for armed robbery warped me back to 1996 when he and I got to know each other. I’d been placed in charge of the first – and what would be the only – series of an ITV show called Tonight with…
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Mark Gorton – A Lasting Memory of Anthony H. Wilson
There was a time when I read the local TV news with Anthony H. Wilson. As a television presenter he had the rare ability to be the same human being in two dimensions as he was in three. He also had the gift of writing out loud. What went down on paper and then came…
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Derek Granger remembers when he joined Granada
I was a journalist, and I’d been a provincial journalist on the Sussex Daily News and Evening Argus in Brighton. I’d come out of the war, and I’d come out of the Navy where I was a lieutenant, and I had worked very, very briefly for them for about six or nine months before I…
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Derek Granger on his first Granada programmes
The very first programme I worked on was a programme called Sir Thomas Beecham at Lincoln’s Inn. And it was a programme I think which had been revised by Denis Forman, and Denis was my mentor then because he was teaching me to write for television, and I went in really as a researcher, that…
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