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…
Read MoreSylvia Cowling
Interview by Stephen Kelly with Sylvia Cowling, 1 July 2020 Sylvia, let’s start with how you came to join Granada Television and when? Right. I joined in June 1970. It was my first proper job. I’d had vacation jobs before as a student and they’d been mainly, in fact wholly, in academic libraries over in…
Read MoreJim Hancock
Interview with Stephen Kelly and Jim Hancock, June 18 2020 How did you come to join Granada, and what had you been doing beforehand? Well, in the run up to that, I’d been president of Manchester University Students’ Union. And in the course of that job, I bumped into a chap called Norman Quick, who…
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Andre Singer transcript
Interviewed by Judith Jones, 4 June 2020. Andre Singer on how he joined Granada How did you come to join Granada? Because I don’t think you set out to be a filmmaker, did you? Not at all, absolutely not. I knew nothing about film whatsoever. I was a potentially bad academic at the time, and…
Read MoreAnne McGarry
Interviewed by Judith Jones, 9 July 2020. How did you come to join Granada? Well, I joined in ‘59 but I left grammar school at 16, did O-levels in ‘55, so that was when I was 16. Things were very different then, not many girls went to university, especially if you’re working class. I think…
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Anne McGarry on what made Granada distinctive in its early years
There were two aspects to it. Firstly, there’s Granada as a working environment, and secondly, there’s Granada’s reputation, I suppose, as a television company. Firstly, compared with other companies I’ve worked for, before and since, during my time at Granada, I can own only describe the environment as being friendly and comradely. There was of…
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Anne McGarry on how Granada extended its programming in 1964
Now, in the autumn of 1964, Granada as well as the transmitting Scene At 6.30 began to really emphasise its commitment to the North of England introducing what it called its Granada in the North concept and this involved two or three minutes of newsy features which were meant to supplement or replace the continuity…
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Anne McGarry on Granada’s Graduate Training Scheme, launched in 1963
During 1963, Granada set up its Granada Graduate Training Programme. There were about a dozen young men, I think. I know there were men, I can only remember one young woman. As part of their training to find out what particular talents they had, they were assigned to a variety of programmes including the Northern…
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Anne McGarry’s memories of Bob Greaves joining Granada
He (Bob Greaves) came to Granada, he replaced Terry Dobson as news editor. I think he was about 30 years old, although he was married and he had two children he gave me the impression of being a little older and more mature for his age. He was a lovely and pleasant and down to…
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Anne McGarry on a typical day on Northern Newscast in the 1960’s
At the beginning, it was called Northern Newscast and it was a five-minute… sometimes it was little bit longer, sometimes they might give you six or seven minutes. You just had to take what they scheduled you on. So, my job description was that of secretary to the news editor, but the setup in the…
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Anne McGarry’s memories of David Plowright
David Plowright was the news editor. He joined the company two years before. I had no idea what he’d eventually become, of course. And he was a 30-year-old man who was very energetic and confident, I’m even tempted to say charismatic. He was a friendly, no-nonsense type of a guy, who insisted on first name…
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Anne McGarry describes the other members of the news team in the 1960s
The assistant news editor was Terry Dodson, he came from the Daily Express. He took over from David Plowright as news editor in 1960. It was him who was on duty the night Kennedy was assassinated. He was the first person who heard from the Press Association in London and passed it onto Barry Heads…
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Anne McGarry describes the type of news stories Granada used to cover
Well, because of the very nature of news every day, every day was slightly different. There was a whole range of stories but you did, after a while, tend to categorise them. They would be the death and disaster ones, people hurt or killed in road accidents, fires, or at work or explosions, etc. Then…
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Anne McGarry on two big stories – the Moors Murders and the assassination of President Kennedy
One of the biggest national stories we had to deal with was the Moors Murders, I remember. I think it must’ve been 1965. I was manning the newsroom one lunch hour and the others were having lunch in the canteen, and I got a phone call from our freelance cameraman who said he’d got a…
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Andre Singer on how he joined Granada
How did you come to join Granada? Because I don’t think you set out to be a filmmaker, did you? Not at all, absolutely not. I knew nothing about film whatsoever. I was a potentially bad academic at the time, and finishing, or writing up, a doctorate at Oxford and worrying about what might have…
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Andre Singer recalls the first Disappearing World programmes that he worked on
Well, it was odd at the beginning because we were contracted as anthropologists, as consultants almost, for the film, not as filmmakers. And it was a research contract. I mean, it was a straightforward research contract that I had, but the role was to find the stories, help set them up, and be the anthropologist.…
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Andre Singer describes his director’s training
I then got frustrated and said, “I really want to make these myself.” You know, I’ve now learnt enough about what it takes to want to make these kinds of films rather than just keep feeding another director each time. And unlike Chris, who went straight into directing because he had done current affairs and…
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Andre Singer explains why the Disappearing World programme stopped in 1977
I moved from Disappearing World, having been a researcher on Disappearing World to being a director on local programmes, to being then a director on World in Action, because at that time, then there was a lull in what was happening on Disappearing World. Then I went back to work for Brian on Disappearing World,…
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Andre Singer on Denis Forman’s support for Disappearing World – and a lost archive
In 1974, we put together a little brochure of about nine films, the first nine films in the series. Denis wrote the introduction to this, and it was very much explaining why he did it and how he supported Brian, what went on. It’s a two-page introduction. It was very nice, and he touched on…
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Andre Singer on the reaction of other anthropologists to Disappearing World
You’d come from an academic background, and I wondered what your fellow academics made of Disappearing World? Oh, they hated it! Initially. It was seen as populous television then. I mean, it’s changed dramatically ever since, and now it’s almost a staple in every anthropology department around the country. That change has been quite phenomenal,…
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Andre Singer recalls one of his most memorable Disappearing World experiences
The original Mursi film. And at that time, I was then told, that was my research era, I was then told, “Okay, you’ve got to get us…” David Turton was our anthropologist advisor, “Get us to these Mursi. Find some transport from Addis Ababa.” So as a sort of naive researcher, off I went and…
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Andre Singer on taking over the role of series editor for Disappearing World – and then leaving Granada
Well, it was different for me. Brian (Moser) had the wonderful sort of patronage and support of Denis and basically, I think things were challenging but much easier at that time. By the time I took over, we had, besides those union problems which I described, Disappearing World was no longer… it had been going…
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Andre Singer recalls the challenges in making Disappearing World
Were there any countries that you couldn’t get access to? Was there anywhere that you wanted to film but for various reasons you couldn’t? Or was it always usually quite straightforward? Yes, I was a bit stymied with my own area of interest, which was Iran. And I’d done my fieldwork in Iran, and I…
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Andre Singer on the value of Disappearing World to Granada’s reputation
It was hugely respected because it was nominated for BAFTAs every year, 75 to 78. It got one. One series BAFTA, series award, one year. I can’t remember which year that was. And so, do you think it was a film that… I mean, there was a stage when Granada was being touted as the…
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Jim Grant describes the role of a Transmission Controller
The structure of ITV back then was, any one day of the week, because London had two companies – Thames during the week and London Weekend from Friday night through Sunday night – there were 15 companies in total, therefore, but 14 on the air at any one time, of which five were majors and…
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Jim Grant on some underhand tactics against management – and leaving Granada
By about 1993, early in 1993, which is when the Gerry Robinson and Charles Allen takeover really happened, they were getting super serious and super vindictive about the struggle for control, really. It was the old world versus the new world. The old world, where I started, had this assumption that, “Yes, we’re all in…
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