Granada is the place that gives me the biggest and strongest and deepest feelings of satisfaction and pride, and that will remain the case. The importance of the social life, I vaguely mentioned that. I think it was crucial actually. But I got the sense that it was… I was trying to say earlier, that it was a joyous coming together of people who liked being together – that was the sense I got. But also it was very democratic, it was like the canteen. You could equally be there with the soap superstars of the day, queuing to get your fish and chips at lunchtime or your bacon butty in the morning, and all the Coronation Street people would be there. And when Laurence Olivier was kind of curating those dramas in the late ‘70s, a lot of those big names would be in the canteen. One or two would have their lunch taken to them in the dressing rooms, but a lot of them would just come to the canteen like anybody else – and that was fantastic. At Thames that didn’t happen; there was an executives’ canteen, and then there was the plebs. Again, that tells you everything you needed to know, you know?
The other thing I enjoyed about Granada was when… we’d shortly been recruited, Gus had recruited us, and soon after, so let’s say I joined May 20, 1974, before the summer break, we went to the car park, those big rooms in the car park where alcohol was allowed to be served, and we had this evening meal with Plowright. It might have been a bit later in 1974 because I was doing sport, and I did say… I was invited to… “Trevor, have you got anything to say? You’re a Wigan lad.” So I do find it astonishing that Granada, which in every other respect is so much a product, representative, typifies the area, the north west, yet you don’t do rugby league! How can you not do rugby league on a local programme? And Plowright basically said, “Actually you’re right.” So then I started getting rugby league on the show, and we got all the big names, and we got a lot of mail, people saying, “Thank goodness you’re doing rugby league at last.” It was almost the sporting equivalent hat Liverpool had for Manchester, dominating Granada. The rugby league people said, “Thank God you recognised that there’s more to sport than football.” So that was my blow for freedom. But Plowright was very magnanimous about it. Gus, of course, didn’t give a monkey’s. If it wasn’t Rangers he wasn’t interested! But the fact that that could happen.
