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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