I should have said also that it shouldn’t surprise people that I’ve never written anything before, because most writers… I mean, a lot of writers, sure, from seven years old, they’ve got like exercise books and they’ll draw little compositions in or whatever. But fundamentally you don’t do anything. What you do is read. You…
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Jim Grant’s initial impressions of Manchester
I was very aware of joining something that was changing, moving away from the past. That Manchester talking truth to London thing, was starting… it was very 50s and it dissipated in the 60s. And it was on the way out in the 70s. The idea that Britain was so regionally divided, but it was…
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Jim Grant talks about how he came to join Granada TV
I just loved entertainment. I loved the idea of putting on a show, that collaboration, that sort of intense relationship with other creative people. I’d always been exhilarated by that. So, I knew there was no question in my mind, I wanted to work in the field of entertainment. Theatre seemed, to me, to be,…
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Jim Grant describes some difficult moments as a transmission controller
It was a job where you sort of sadly hoped that something bad would happen that day, because that’s… because of the structure, big events were few and far between. I remember I started out as a trainee assistant, as we said. And when I finished my training, I was an assistant, and then I…
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Jim Grant remembers the unions at the start of his career at Granada
Many things by coincidence from the beginning of my career to the end and were a progression. And those 18 years were really an arc for the union. It started out when I joined, it was absolutely all powerful. It was an old-fashioned traditional trade union, a fascinating thing actually, because fundamentally the structure and…
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Jim Grant remembers the Granada company as a family
I walked in there as a new trainee, and my boss was David Black, head of presentation. And his boss was Joyce Wooller, who had a seat on the board, reporting to the board chairman who I think, at that point, was Cecil Bernstein, maybe Sydney, maybe. Maybe David Plowright was effectively the top guy,…
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Jim Grant on how Granada began to change
The old days were great at Granada, especially because, as I said earlier, Granada had been this brave documentary producer. But I sensed when I got there that they were getting a little weary of that, a little scared of it. The British Steel episode, which I’m certain the archive covers extensively, have been… you…
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Jim recalls his long working hours at Granada
If we were properly staffed five and five – you know, five pairs of people – if we were properly staffed, it was a relatively okay, sort of around about a 37-hour week, and antisocial hours of course, but not too bad. And we had, what they called notional weekends, so that your weekend might…
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Jim Grant describes how he became more involved in the ACTT union
So yes, the union situation was super formal, and the committee meetings were all run to Robert’s rules of order, super formal, proper minutes, all of that kind of thing. I was used to that culture from having grown up in Birmingham, but I did love the north west flavour on it. Like I say,…
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Jim Grant on the 1979 TV strike
But a really serious formal situation, union versus management, and literally came to a head for me in a super personal way. As a metaphor, in 1979, the annual negotiations were going really badly and the ITN shop in London got into a particularly advanced situation and walked out. And so, the ITN content was…
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Jim Grant on how the ITV network operated
In my current situation, where I’ve been involved with film and television as a content provider for 20 plus years, and actually, 99.99% of it is just endless bullshit talking, and very little ever happens. And it was, of course, exactly the opposite back then. Programmes were made as a right. And there was a…
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Jim Grant recalls the change in the power of the TV unions in the 1990’s
Thatcher came to television later than many other industries, obviously, but she got there in the end. And again, the flash point was a very… as I understand it, the story I heard was a very ironic and unfortunate flash point really, which was that there was an ITN interview with Thatcher at Downing Street.…
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Jim Grant remembers the dreaded log book
Every shift, we completed a log. It was called the log, and any mistakes, errors, or departures from the schedule, we would explain in writing. And so, generally speaking, the explanation was just read and accepted. Only in a tiny minority of cases would there be a post-mortem, which was partly Plowright and that generation…
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Jim Grant on how his career developed
Yes, when I was about 26, which was very young. It was like 10 years younger than anybody who had been before. But it was made for me, that job. The old style of that job, the first half of it, that, I was made for that. I could deal with accuracy, I could deal…
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Paul Greengrass describes how he joined Granada
I can remember when I joined. I joined in October ’77, and I was at university. I don’t think I was alone, I think, going into television was the sort of popular thing to do at that time, I think, particularly if you had a sense of the world. I always loved World in Action.…
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Paul Greengrass remembers his early days as a sports researcher
And so, I literally travelled up in the next day from memory, and I was put up in a pub, I’m sure it doesn’t exist now, it was down at the back of… If Quay Street was one side, then you got at the bottom of the old Granada Studios. As you looked at the…
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Paul Greengrass on the debt he owes Paul Doherty, the head of sport at Granada
But Paul Doherty, I owe a special debt. Because I was a young student, I’d gone to a good university, I had the advantages and the naiveties that that bestows upon you, and probably the arrogances too. And I was, I think, in many ways, unprepared for the world of work, what work was really…
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Paul Greengrass remembers his worst telling-off from Paul Doherty
The worst row we ever had, funnily enough was about the slides, which I often tell it to my kids when they go out to work, because it’s an abject lesson in what not to do. Which is that I’d been there a few weeks, and Doc came in one day. He was a great…
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Paul Greengrass on the training he got on Kick Off – and the team he worked with
it was a great year. I learned so much. One of the beauties about working in sports television, which you saw everything that there was, you did it all. You made films with a crew, you mounted items in a studio. We did Kick Off on a Friday night. You did OB work. You edited…
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Paul Greengrass on the investigation into Louis Edwards that became a World in Action
The only way you could get on, it seemed to me, was to find your own story. Obviously, I was up there doing football 24/7. At that time, the Edwards family, what they did was they brought forward, essentially, a rights issue in the shares. That had never been done in football clubs, because bear…
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Paul Greengrass reflects on the culture of World in Action
When I went to Granada, which I was very lucky to do… and I owe Granada an equal debt, but World in Action… so I’m not decrying it in any way, but World in Action as the years… I knew none of this then, by the way. This is wisdom that came to me much,…
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Paul Greengrass on the ethos behind World in Action
I’m sure that’s true of Granada as a whole, incidentally. I think one of the interesting things as we sit and talk today is that these kinds of cultural organisations are now few and far between. Organisations where you and I would have come in as young men, and matured and become men, as opposed…
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Paul Greengrass on when he realised he needed to move on from Granada
I think what happened was that, as I say, the me that was the me of my teenage years, which was always wanting to head towards writing and making my own things, and self-expression, began to collide with the World in Action that was about exposing – and not that I didn’t love those programmes,…
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Paul Greengrass recalls Granada as a precious cultural institution
They were all these people, Denis Forman, David Plowright. I went around them all actually, and it left me with an abiding sense of Granada as one of Britain’s great liberal institutions, like a great university, like the BBC and very different in character. One of those precious cultural institutions that, when you set aside…
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Paul Greengrass on the world that was World in Action
So World in Action in that period was very much a closed world. The offices were up there on the third floor I want to say, off to an annexe at the back of the street. They were sort of their own space, weren’t they? They were. I’m not sure, actually, that was the very…
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Paul Greengrass remembers some of his colleagues from World in Action
David (Boulton) was a very gifted man, highly intelligent, thoughtful. I think probably one of their very best executives, but he wasn’t very popular. I don’t really know why. … but he wasn’t popular with the troops, I think because there were people around…now I’m guessing, because the first time he was obviously before my…
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Paul Greengrass on the crew he worked with on World in Action
And then of course the best, George Jesse Turner and Phil Taylor were always shooting wherever you went. It’d be sometimes Alan Bale on sound. Phil Taylor. And we went to many, many places around the world. God, I remember being in Beirut with George Jesse Turner in ‘82, it must’ve been. With George Jesse…
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Jim Grant – Transcript
Interviewed by Stephen Kelly , 12 May 2020 So let’s start about how you came to join Granada. Well, for so many of these answers, it’s important to remember it was a long time ago. My first day of work was September 12, 1977, which was so different in every imaginable way, especially for young people.…
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Paul Greengrass transcript
Interviewed by Stephen Kelly, 5 May 2020. Let’s start at the beginning. Where were you before Granada? How did you come to join Granada? And when? Dates are quite important. I can remember when I joined. I joined in October ’77, and I was at university. I don’t think I was alone, I think, going…
Read MoreTales about Sidney Bernstein from Tim Sullivan
My favourite story of Sidney…tell me if Helen McMurray’s told you this. She was working in Globe & Simpson, which was the building opposite Granada, which, colloquially, used to be known as Pearl & Dean. And we were making a show called Reports Action, with Bob Greaves, first of the local kind of telethon. We…
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