Granadaland Granadaland

Luise Fitzwalter describes her Granada career

I made a big pitch at my interview about children’s programmes, because inevitably I was a mother and I sat and watched this ghastly stuff. And I didn’t realise that Steve Leahy was just about to revamp the children’s department. And I was promised that I could work in children’s, but it didn’t happen, of…

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Luise Fitzwalter describes the innovation on Open House

We created something called Open House for North West Parliament, which was a brilliant idea where we used the House of Commons set that Granada had and we invited local MPs from the north west, and the retired deputy speaker who lived in the north west, and they debated issues like education, health etc. They…

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Luise Fitzwalter on the end of her Granada career

Let’s just continue with your career, to where your career ends at Granada. Huh. Right, well… I suppose I’m still very angry about it. What happened to Ray particularly. I think two people suffered the most from the whole debacle when Gerry came in, Gerry Robinson and Charles Allen, and one was Plowright and one…

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Luise Fitzwalter on the change of culture at Granada

Apparently Charles Allen, when he gave this presentation to the board, said, “What you do,” and this is what they used to do on Granada’s… and this is hearsay, I heard this story ……“What you do is you squeeze the client, as it were, until the pips squeak. And if, when they start complaining that…

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Luise Fitzwalter on the great pool of talent at Granada

The great thing about Granada, as I said, was the great can-do attitude, and they had this phrase, “Let’s do some mischief.” So that that was hugely exciting and creative. But the biggest thing about Granada was the pool of talent. And you never got trained, but what you did was you worked with the…

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Luise Fitzwalter on Granada’s cultural identity

Do you feel that Granada was more than just a television company in terms of its cultural identity? It wanted to be. I had an argument when I was on news with the powers that be because I said that I thought all our reporters should have a northern accent, a north west accent of…

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Steve Anderson describes how he became a journalist

Well I grew up in a place called Kirkby, which was a big council estate on the outskirts of Liverpool. Newtown. It was where Z Cars was located. They didn’t call it Kirkby in Z Cars, they called it ‘Newtown’, but they used to shoot all their location stuff. My local pub was in the…

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Steve Anderson describes how he joined Granada

  What was happening all at this same time, it was the late ‘70s, the Granada franchise was up for renewal. And Granada had got spooked by this man called Terry Smith who ran Radio City in Liverpool. Radio City had started about four or five years earlier. It had been a big success commercially.…

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Steve Anderson on the early days of Granada in Liverpool

So there was a lot of interest in the region, not just representing Manchester, and Granada had to respond to it in some way, didn’t they? They couldn’t ignore it. Correct. Yes, yes. So John and I were essentially getting at least two pieces on Granada. We normally were in the news, so we were…

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Steve Anderson on the eleven week ITV strike in 1979

  It was very bruising because I was… Andy Harries and I were the joint FoCs, Fathers of the Chapel, for the NUJ. And because the NUJ was never ever particularly considered a television union, it was a print union, as far as television people were considered. There was no, certainly at national level, there…

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Steve Anderson on how he came to work on World in Action

‘79. The strike happened August, I think. July, August. Yes. Maybe slightly earlier. What we did, actually, we stumbled on what turned out to be a very big story, John and I. It was the death of this man called Jimmy Kelly who died in police custody in Merseyside. With Mike Short particularly, because he’d…

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Steve Anderson describes his early days on World in Action

What year did you start on World in Action? So, I was 22. What was your first show? The first show was about the Yorkshire Ripper. It was the time when those tapes had come out. You know, those tapes that had gone to the West Yorkshire Police, and this man claiming that he was…

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Steve Anderson remembers the Toxteth riots

It was July 4, 1981, the day I got married. I got married in Gatley. St James’s Church, Gatley. And we had the reception in Alderley Edge, cherry centre all the way, because all the money crowd had come over from Liverpool and there wasn’t just my family, but lots of journo mates as well.…

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Steve Anderson on the glamour of Coronation Street

I was fascinated by them. I mean, all the Coronation Street… I remember taking my parents around Coronation Street, one weekend. It was funny because, talk about crossing the line, that sort of added to this totally different world really. Even when I was a newspaper reporter, at least I was covering my local patch.…

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Michael Ryan – biography

Michael Ryan began his television career in 1963 as a BBC2 trainee, working on Panorama as a studio director. However a chance meeting in 1966 with Michael Parkinson in his father’s London pub, led to him joining Granada as a Researcher. In 1967 he worked on Cinema which, at the time, boasted an audience of…

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Steve Morrison – biography

Steve Morrison joined Granada Television in 1974 while still a student at the National Film School. He would quickly become a producer on World In Action. After making a number of World In Action programmes he moved to local programmes where he became editor of Granada Reports and a few years later became Head of…

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Brian Lapping on how he joined Granada

So that was my first job. I got a job at the Daily Mirror. And then I moved from the Mirror to the Guardian, and from the Guardian to the Financial Times, and then from the Financial Times to New Society, and it was when I was working on New Society, a weekly magazine, I…

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Brian Lapping on producing What the Paper Say

So what did you do at Granada? What were the first jobs you had there? Well, first of all I was put onto local programmes for a few weeks and sort of learned about things, and then I was given What the Papers Say to run, and I remember my first week on What the…

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Brian Lapping’s impressions of World In Action

Tell me how you came to be on World in Action.   I don’t think it was anything to do with me. It was simply I was told by Denis (Forman) or David Plowright or whoever, “Will you take over World in Action?” Hah! It’s come back to me. I had a telephone call. I…

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Brian Lapping remembers the GTV series End of Empire (1985)

 When I was on the Guardian, my job was largely writing about Commonwealth affairs. I went to the subcontinent and to Africa. I wrote quite a lot of stories about the conflicts Britain was having with the rebels there and the measures that were leading, in effect, quite a number of them moving to independence,…

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Brian Lapping’s gratitude to his colleague, Norma Percy

You worked a lot with Norma Percy over the years. You worked in Granada with Norma didn’t you? And since as an independent? How important has she been in your career? Absolutely crucial. It’s quite freakish. John Mackintosh MP, Labour MP, great enthusiasm for the creation of select committees, very significant figure. At the time…

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Brian Lapping on the Bernsteins and Denis Forman

One of the questions is what did you make of the grand days of Granada and the Bernsteins, and Denis Forman and Plowright? Well, I did get to know Sidney moderately well. Sidney was extraordinary. Very incisive and intrusive and fascinating to talk to. Cecil I didn’t know scarcely at all. But I had quite…

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