This photo shows John Hopkins (Tech. Supervisor), Phil Griffin & Mike Short (producer) (courtesy of Barry Hairline).
My first job after university was at Piccadilly Radio when commercial radio was just getting some its early evolution.
In 1974 Piccadilly Radio was the second independent station outside London. BRMB was the first. So in April, April 2 – not April 1 – Piccadilly radio opened in Manchester – 261 – and I worked there for four years, until 1978. And one or two of my friends and colleagues from Piccadilly Radio had already crossed Deansgate and made their way down Quay Street, and I followed in 78 and took up my role as a really piss poor researcher in regionals, as you probably know. Never on Granada Reports or Granada Tonight, I’m pleased to say. I don’t mean that in a disparaging way, but… never a terrific journalist never nose for a particularly good news story, didn’t work like that. So sort of gravitated towards the arts, then schools programmes, which I absolutely loved. I spent a long time with delightful Jack Smith and a long time that the delightful Muriel Young as well, doing kids programmes, and trucked up and down in my beloved Pullman several times, sometimes twice a week, to London, so it was fantastic times, and some terrific programmes that I particularly enjoyed working on, and I spent a good period of time on Crown Court which I loved, which evolved into an interest in drama, and so I moved through Granada for 11 years, never particularly well, usually in regional programmes, and usually drunk in the afternoons, which I suppose was de rigueur. But Granada was a very important part of my life and formed the very largest part of me. I had wanted to work at Granada for years and years, and largely because of the Francis Bacon in reception, which had taken my eye. I had I’d been going to Granada, going to the Granada campus before then, because something that I’m very interested in at the moment and probably will write about, I was a member, and therefore an audience member, at the Stables Theatre Club, which was quite an extraordinary establishment in the early 1970s, unique in fact, and sadly short-lived. So from having gone to the Stables Theatre Club before I went to university, and then coming to work at Granada, and drinking in the staff bar at the Stables, to then having my wedding reception at the Stables was quite a nice kind of circular thing.
