I’m on This Morning (in Liverpool), then in about ‘96 they made this announcement that This Morning was going to move to London. They just made this announcement saying this had been decided, that This Morning would move to London. I was happy to go, although they targeted certain people they called “key staff”, one of which was me, to go to London. I was happy to go, because I’ve lived in London, and I like London. We went to London, I’m going to say it was about August 1996. It was quite a lot, because a lot of things I inherited, in This Morning in Liverpool, I inherited from Hazel (Coe), which she had set up, which was fine. But to be down in London was a whole new ball game. I was involved in interviewing studio staff, setting up certain systems. You didn’t have the luxury of, if, say, somebody went sick in Liverpool, I would ring up Manchester and say, “I’ve got a sick cameraman. Can you send somebody over.” And they would. They would be there in, I don’t know, an hour? Half an hour? But in London, if somebody went sick, I hadn’t got that luxury. I had to find people. It was just a whole new setup, doing that.
What was your job title there?
I was then called programme coordinator. And as well as setting up these systems, and finding new staff, I got more into the budgeting side, as well, because I was pulling in lots of freelance staff. They all had to be accounted for. So I was responsible for the studio staff. The whole production had got so much bigger, and I worked closely with the technical supervisor, who was Craig Williams. Craig Williams is a really nice bloke, who had come from the tech staff in Liverpool. It was all new to him, as well. So the two of us muddled, and found our way through various entanglements. But we succeeded, I like to think.
How long were you in that role?
I was there for two years. I had to decide whether I wanted to stay on there, and maybe buy a property in London also. And I’ve kind of decided that I would return to the north, and I subsequently came back to Manchester and I worked on the satellite programmes, GSB (Granada Satellite Broadcast), as a production manager.