Sylvia Cowling

Sylvia Cowling describes her union activities

The union, we had two shops, the live shop and the film shop. ACTT it was called in those days, the Association of Cinematographer and Television Technicians. Golly, I didn’t think I could remember that! And of course, it was a closed shop, so you joined the union when you joined Granada. Didn’t bother me…

Sylvia Cowling on leaving Granada

At what point did you look to leave, and were you made redundant? No, no, I wasn’t. I moved on to other jobs. I moved down out of the library entirely in 1998. And that was when I became the project manager for PARIS. And then that evolved into being involved with database transfer. You…

Sylvia Cowling on some of the famous people she met

Real relationships were set up. Sometimes people would actually come from London to view. They’d come, they’d stay overnight because they wanted to view a lot of your material. And I remember Tony Palmer came up. He was writing the Beatles’ All You Need Is Love, and making a series of programmes about it for…

Sylvia Cowling recalls the technological changes in her role

Lynn Lloyd, who has now died, unfortunately. I remember when she was shop steward coming in one day and saying, “I’m going to America.” Oh, yes? She and somebody from the newsroom, whose name I can’t remember beyond Eleanor. I think she may have been one of the live shot people, but in the newsroom.…

Sylvia Cowling on the role of the film library

The staff in the library were good, we got on well together and we had… people came into the library. We weren’t isolated. We were down the end of a corridor past the editing suites. But you see, editing, I think… editors and the directors used to get fed up with sitting in small rooms…

Sylvia Cowling describes how she joined Granada

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 Leeds, where I come from. Because we had a friend at our church who ran the art college library in Leeds, and she just…

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…