Trevor Hyett – Granadaland

Trevor Hyett describes how he joined Granada TV

Basically, I knew Gus MacDonald socially. And I was working for the TV Times and persuaded the features editor – I was doing the billings for the London region, you know, ‘7:00: Crossroads’ kind of thing, and I persuaded the features editor that it’s important to have a feature on World in Action because they…

Trevor Hyett describes the impact of Granada Reports when he was a presenter

So I would present it most often with Tony …. and with Bob quite a lot as well, only very occasionally with Gordon, and I presented later with the woman who became my girlfriend, who was Anna Ford. She and I presented it. And the mail we got was… just teasing, yes, kind of, “Good…

Trevor Hyett on Granada and the North

I think to work for Granada you had to buy into the non-metropolitan attitude, and that was a source of great pride as well actually. It wasn’t just a northern thing about ‘soft southerners’ or anything clichéd of that sort, it was, we are a distinct culture actually, and Sidney knew that, even though he…

Trevor Hyett on introducing Ted Heath to George Harrison

And another great historic moment was in 1977, when Tony had just finished and finished interviewing George Harrison and I was about to interview Ted Heath. Ted Heath then long… I mean, this is now three years since he lost those two elections in 1974, and this was his first book I think, the one…

Trevor Hyett remembers interviewing Muhammad Ali

My four years – 1974-1978 – with Granada Reports are still the best years of my working life. There are many highlights. One was a half-hour interview with Muhammad Ali in 1975. He was promoting a book, an autobiography, and I had to go down to ITN in Wells Street so do it, at three…

Trevor Hyett has fond memories of his colleagues

Bob Greaves was wonderful. I used to sit and marvel as how he could do that job with such a naturalness and a relaxedness, and that he knew enough about so much to conduct any kind of interview with any kind of person for local news. Tony, of course, was just at such a… Tony…

Trevor Hyett on a couple of programmes from his later years at GTV

In the 80s I went back… while I was on the road with Mike Harding, I was contacted by Muriel Young, who was the head of children’s and related stuff. She was responsible for the Bay City Rollers, if you remember. And she… I sang on a few of the programmes called Songbook, and in…

Trevor Hyett on working on C4’s Union World

I only stopped working on it (On the Market) because one of my favourite programmes asked me to go join them as a reporter, which was Union World, and I was a big supporter of Gus (Macdonald), and very proud of the fact that I knew the man who introduced two very important programme to…

Trevor Hyett on what he enjoyed most about Granada

Granada is the place that gives me the biggest and strongest and deepest feelings of satisfaction and pride, and that will remain the case. The importance of the social life, I vaguely mentioned that. I think it was crucial actually. But I got the sense that it was… I was trying to say earlier, that…

Trevor Hyett defines ‘Granadaland’

The thing I liked about Granada generally was its non-metropolitan attitude and that’s what I think gave us distinctiveness was the fact that Sidney started off in the very beginning, “We will not be London-based, we will never be London-based.” I had a little office in Golden Square but essentially Granada was Manchester, much to…

Trevor Hyett on trade unions and what he was paid

I was in the NUJ; I’d been in the NUJ for a long time, since I was 21 when I was editor of that paper I mentioned earlier. The ACTT of course were the union with the muscle, and I always found actually… Gus would take the mickey out of us because every now and…