So what was your experience of working on regional programmes?
I did everything on regional programmes.
How did you find it?
I loved it. Because one, Granada regional programmes was a very vibrant place, it was led by Steve Morrison, it was the first time I got to work with Steve, Steven Morrison… you know, an extraordinary force of nature. And he was ambitious for us all and for his department, and any opportunity was an opportunity for us to do things, whether it was making a network obituary for Alfred Hitchcock or John Lennon, or even Bob Marley I remember we did as well, or occupying the afternoons with a twice-weekly talk show, or making a Saturday morning kids’ show, Steve was up for it all, and it was a fantastically fertile, exciting time to be in television. And regional programmes after 10pm, after the news, were What’s On, Celebration was a great arts strand, I made several Celebrations and obviously things like Reports Politics and so on, besides – which I don’t think I ever did – and I remember Jeremy Fox doing a health show called Good Health… it was quite a rich period.
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Tell us about your experience of What’s On.
Well, I did the Tony Wilson What’s On before the Geoff Moore What’s On, but I only did it a couple of times. And I was a trainee director, and you train in local programmes, and you do the news and you do everything that’s going, you know, you do music inserts, and… I am very chuffed that one of my music inserts was the first television appearance from Joy Division, which, of course, in the classic Tony Wilson was played on Granada Reports that night. We taped it in the afternoon, and then it went out at 6.25.
