Granada Reports was a six o’clock magazine show. Maybe it was at six thirty; I can’t remember. It was linked to the six o’clock network news and it was the regional opt-out so it only went out in Granadaland. It was studio-based but with film inserts. It was a typical magazine, so it had sport every day, local news every day, and then a little mini feature of some sort, then something humorous, and there’d be studio interviews as well. Producing it was quite good fun but I realised I didn’t really like studio. I much preferred doing things on film, because it was so uncontrollable. It was just not so satisfying, really.
I did that for a bit, then I went for a director’s board, which they’d never had… Director’s boards in those days were very much the way that studio cameramen, floor managers, people like that, technicians, would become directors. They’d go for a director’s board and they’d become directors. And they’d never had a producer apply for a director’s board. Anyway, I went to this director’s board, I think it was Mike Scott who said to me, “So, Claudia, if you were a director, what would you do about So It Goes?” which was the late night popular music show that Tony Wilson presented. And I’d never even watched it really. I didn’t know what to say. So I said, “Well, I’d just like to preface my remarks, Mike, by saying that if I was deputy programme controller, I’d take it off the air!” And I got such a great laugh. Plowright was like ! And I never had to answer the question! So I got the director’s board, I was one of the trainee directors.
