And then I did my first World in Action and that was a really big deal, because it really was testing… and it was 1983 and it was produced by Ian McBride, and it was a film about Jesse Jackson, and actually on the road with Jesse Jackson, who was undecided about seeking nomination or…
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Chris Kelly on his work on World In Action
I worked on World in Action for years. I was the sort of principal commentator sort of thing… well, for one season, Bill and I did the links live in the studio, which was great – although it can’t have been that great because they dropped it! And I didn’t get a credit to begin…
Read MoreArthur Taylor on a secret mission for World In Action
Going back a long way to Songs from the Two Brewers, one of the people who emerged from that I thought was a tremendous talent was Ralph McTell. In fact, that series was the first time that anyone had seen or heard Streets of London, would you believe? And again, I went to Scott and…
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Dorothy Byrne on working on World in Action
I went to work on World in Action as a researcher, and that was fantastic. Although we were called researchers, anywhere else we would either have been called assistant producers or producers, so it was a bit of a misnomer. Because we were either given an idea or we came up with the idea ourselves,…
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George Turner on getting the call to work on World in Action
So I got a call just towards the end of December in ’68 when I was still operating on Big Breadwinner Hog and saying that the cameraman who had been on World in Action, which was Ray Goode, had had enough. Because I’d been involved in the Grosvenor Square demonstration, one of six crews, and…
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George Turner sums up his work on World In Action
I probably worked on about 800 World in Actions out of the 1500 they made, of which I think I can honestly say I did in excess of 600 of them all myself. That doesn’t sounds much over 30 years but you know, it’s kind of 20 every year out of a run of 40.…
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George Turner talks about how long World In Action filming took
And when you were doing a World in Action programme, how long on average would you film for? About seven days. Certainly the World in Action period for the first four or five years, maybe ten, but say when I started in 1969. The first programme I did was a programme in Northern Ireland called…
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George Turner on some of the memorable World in Action programmes he worked on
There’s no one favourite programme, and that sounds slightly glib because, you know, the variety of the programmes was so varied from, you know, spending time with ministers through to spending it with people who’d got illnesses, thalidomide being one of the cases, but, you know, people that had struggles in life, I’m thinking mainly…
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Claudia Milne on World In Action’s macho culture
I can remember for instance when I was Manchester based. Everybody on World in Action was invited to this Christmas party, and I went along, and suddenly this strip dancer appeared and started stripping. I was just absolutely appalled. All these what I thought were nice men were standing round leering, jeering and laughing. I…
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George Turner on the team work on World In Action
You have to remember that in the World in Action days we always had a director/producer, and there was nearly always a researcher. World in Action of course didn’t have presenters. It was one of the things that we didn’t have, not until much later on, but in the period that I remember with most…
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Mike Beckham moving from Coronation Street to World In Action
I then did some not very good detective series that I didn’t like and they weren’t all that good. I asked to start making films. I joined a series called ‘This England’ run by Denis Mitchell and Norman Swallow, who were two very good documentary filmmakers. The key to the series was that there would…
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Mike Beckham describes how WIA was run
It was one of Granada’s jewels in the crown, as it were. It had the money, it had the backing, and above all it had the talent. There were some fantastic producers on there and some very good editors like Jeremy Wallington and Leslie Woodhead, Gus Macdonald, John Birt. It had the backing and the…
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Mike Beckham describes his proudest WIAs
It’s extraordinary being in Vietnam because as I say, you’ve been in the Stables, and then a week later you’re in a helicopter in a battle zone. You had total access. The Americans allowed crews to go anywhere they wanted to, all you had to do was go to Tan Son Nhut and say, is…
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Steve Morrison’s memories of working on World In Action
After I had ben running the documentary unit, Gayle and I – who were not romantically connected, but did films together – were invited to join World in Action, which obviously was a very glamorous programme, and we soon discovered that we were the ‘quick turnaround’ team. So while all the more established members of…
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Jon Woods on working on World In Action in Belfast
I assisted on quite a few World In Action’s. It was a very busy weekly show, high turnaround of ideas and projects, and one that I smile at a lot was a World In Action we were shooting with Stuart Prebble, producer, about the IRA, and we were filming in Belfast and Dublin, and it’s…
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Michael Ryan recalls working on World In Action
I went to World in Action as a producer/director in the autumn of 1968 and basically I stayed there for ten years and I didn’t do anything else, with the exceptions of oddities like election programmes. But to all intents and purposes I was on World in Action as a producer…. I had the long…
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David Liddiment’s thoughts on World in Action
Let me talk about World in Action. Because others have said that you didn’t like World in Action. I loved World in Action. ….. This was when you were head of… controller of programmes? At ITV or Granada? At Granada. Well, don’t forget, this was a muddy time, Charles Allen had come in from group,…
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David Boulton describes how ‘World In Action’ operated in the 1970’s and the team that supported the journalists
At any one time there was somewhere between 12 and 15 (maybe even a few more) producers, directors and researchers on World in Action and, of course, we had very regular meetings to discuss programme ideas and there was a quite fierce competition among the producers and researchers to put forward ideas that they would…
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David Boulton describes his experiences of making films in Northern Ireland for ‘World In Action
The two strands that I tended to make my own were films in Northern Ireland (that was the first one) because the so-called ‘Irish Troubles’ or the ‘English Troubles’ as far as the Irish were concerned were all bubbling up at this time from 1969 onwards and I had a peculiar ‘in’ into Northern Ireland…
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David Boulton on the renowned Steel Papers ‘World in Action’ programme
What happened was that there was a strike at British Steel. British Steel was still a nationalised company and there were rumours that the management end of the dispute was being dictated by the Thatcher Government and these rumours were very strongly denied by the management of British Steel, Charles Villiers, the Chairman of British…
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David Boulton reflects on the challenges of managing the ‘World In Action’ team
You’ve talked a little bit about the eclectic bunch of people who worked on World in Action. What was it like being editor of that programme and having to deal with these very clever but also people who could be very awkward, shall we say, to work with? Yes, you’ve put it very well. They…
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David Boulton on how he valued the support of his cameramen and film editors on ‘World In Action’
When I joined World in Action (in 1969) the two newly appointed editors of World in Action, joint editors, were John Birt and Gus MacDonald. John Birt was, I think, only about 23 when he was appointed editor of World in Action and Gus was a little older but had already begun to make his…
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Geoff Moore recalls his first stint on World In Action
By July or August 1969 I was in World in Action with John Birt. In the summer of 1970 I left Granada to become a rock and roll star! But my first period on World in Action was late summer ’69 to the middle of 1970 in which time I researched three World in Action’s.…
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Geoff Moore on his second period working on World in Action
I remember in the winter of ’73/’74 I got fed up with music (there was nothing in it for me) and then I knocked on the doors of Gus MacDonald, for World in Action again, and John Birt at London Weekend. They both offered me contracts! I took the Granada one. So then we have…
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Leslie Woodhead talks about his role on World In Action in the mid-60’s
But (David) Plowright – who I should have mentioned, since he was always an immensely important person in my life, and remains so – he had been the second producer on People and Places, and he had then gone on and I had worked for him on All Our Yesterdays and What the Papers Say…
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Leslie Woodhead recalls some of the memorable World In Action programmes he worked on in the late 60’s
In that late 60s period, we began to do… well, first of all, Plowright’s idea was that he wanted to pair… the change that he made from Tim Hewat’s time was to try and make it a more filmic series. In other words, he was interested in films that looked like films, as well as…
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Leslie Woodhead on how World In Action was part of the wider cultural changes in the 1960’s
I think it’s very hard to estimate how fundamental the change was. Certainly we were part of a wave that was going on, which included rock ‘n’ roll and included fashion, and included new theatre and cinema. We were involved with all of that; it wasn’t an accident that the Beatles’ office was only across…
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Gordon Burns remembers working on World In Action in Northern Ireland and the challenges he and his crew faced
The other thing I should mention, which is another one of my pride areas, that World in Action was the great award-winning, again, pioneering investigative programme which the elite, if you like, in news… most journalists’ ambition was to work on World in Action, and it was left, right and centre award-winning, and tremendous investigative…
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Roland Coburn remembers working on World In Action for over 20 years
Ultimately, it came that there was an editor’s job. I applied for it and luckily I got it. You then started editing ‘proper’ programmes. I was lucky enough to do a Bulman and a Strangers which, in those years, were ITV’s top drama programmes. Not many people now will remember them, but they were great,…
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