I always felt that it was small enough so people knew who you were. What I also loved, that even before the Internet and people sending emails to people left right and centre, you could send notes to those in authority. The line of command at Granada was really short. So you could see Denis Forman sitting in the canteen, never saw David Plowright there, but they were not remote figures.
I remember once I had worked on this film for the local arts programme about a black organist based in Manchester called Wayne Marshall who had played at Glyndebourne for the famous Porgy & Bess production. I’d come up with the idea, I’d actually seen an interview with him and suggested we did this in the series. I remember being handed, after the programme had gone out, a little note from Denis Forman saying how much he’d enjoyed the programme the night before and how he’d been to see this Glyndebourne production and how marvellous it was we were recognising this figure. Again, you felt really proud to have worked on something that the boss had seen and had liked.
He was at that point Chairman of the company?
He was still Chairman of the company. I think I came across him a couple of times after that but nothing significant.
I remember once, I don’t know why I had the gall, I sent David Plowright a note. I’d worked on a local programme called ‘Flying Start’; Flying Fart I think it was known by those who worked on it. This was at a time when, this must have been towards the end of the 1980s when the Berlin Wall was coming down; there was that whole upheaval in Eastern Europe. I’d sent a note to David Plowright saying had he thought of making a series of ‘Flying Start’ based in one of the Eastern European countries because this was a time when new entrepreneurs might be coming out of the woodwork. He wrote back immediately and said it was a ‘great idea and I’m asking Stuart Prebble to get onto this right away’. So it was a company where I felt if you came up with ideas. You were never intimidated by the place.
