I made a big pitch at my interview about children’s programmes, because inevitably I was a mother and I sat and watched this ghastly stuff. And I didn’t realise that Steve Leahy was just about to revamp the children’s department. And I was promised that I could work in children’s, but it didn’t happen, of course they put me on local news. And so, as a researcher I did local news, I did children’s and I did Hypotheticals. And then my dad died in 1984, so a year after I joined. And suddenly that had a really cathartic affect on me because I thought, “Where am I going, what am I doing? Life is short.”
And so I went for a producership and got it, and then they put me on Granada Reports without any training whatsoever, and I didn’t even know what those white sheets were for. I used to do them as a researcher, but I didn’t realise that without them, the camera people didn’t know what was happening. And it was all before the electronics. And there was one ghastly Granada Reports when all that was in view was camera one chasing camera two round the studio. And Bob Greaves came up the gantry, shook me, and I said, “I don’t know how to do this!” Day one! I was put in this box, I had a brilliant PA who ran it for me, she wasn’t here today, “I don’t know how to do it.” And that that point Rob Caird actually got somebody to sit in with me for a week. That’s called ‘training’.
I did various local programmes, then I went on to Union World, and then I went on to What the Papers Say and What the Papers Say was the first time I worked for Ray. Because the World in Action corridor, Ray (Fitzwalter , Editor of World In Action and later Luise’s partner) was one end and the What the Papers Say office was at the other end. And What the Papers Say, technically came under David Bolton, but I didn’t actually work for Ray, but Ray was there, and very helpful, as he was with Union World, because a lot of the footage we used was World in Action footage.
And then after that I became editor of regional news.
