I would like to think that one of the major legacies that Granada has left us is a whole load of people who have worked in television and who are now disseminating their knowledge out to other people, training other people to do it, so I think that family approach and a whole raft of people who are still working in the industry and are giving stuff back, could only really happen for a company who were happy to employ and to train new, because I think that’s the ethos, I quite like giving things back and training people, because I was trained myself. So I think there’s a whole band of brothers that are from Granada, and who feel proud to have done and been worked through Granada, associated with it.
In terms of its cultural legacy, it’s there most nights of the week – Coronation Street. It gave the nation Coronation Street and nobody will ever be able to take that away from it. It gave an amazing drama that’s still going on today.
I think what it did do was it made London realise – another great asset that Granada did – realise that the world didn’t rotate around them. It has reversed a bit, it is elliptical, and I think when the Bernsteins were just handing over to Compass Caterers, that we had won and that we had pulled so much out of London on terms of production to the network, it was a great legacy, that. And I think as an institution, it’s put the northwest, and the north west character, the north west life, and it’s people, it’s humour… you know, Victoria Wood… I’m not going back to Wheeltappers and Shunters, but we’ve put the humour and the character of the people from the north west into everybody’s living room, and I think… it’s a shame, I think, that the building has closed, and that it has moved in two smaller parts to a building on top of Salford University and Salford Quays to be the new centre for Granada, and it’s gone to Salford Quays for a new Coronation Street location and studios, the great thing for me was that it was based in the centre of Manchester. People who walked past it could see it there; you could look down Quay Street and see the word ‘Granada’, and now that’s gone it’s a great loss. But it will never be taken away. It was made in the north and it will remain in the north, but everybody will know it
