I was a Coronation Street teddy boy
Adventures on set in the early years of Granada TV
Dear readers — With the weekend just right round the corner, we’ve got an engrossing long-read today from Trevor Hoyle, the Rochdale author, playwright, and one-time actor, about his experiences as a young man in the early star-studded days of GRANADALAND. More than 50 years ago, Hoyle writes, Granada was the most innovative regional TV company in the UK, one with a deserved reputation as a hotbed for fostering radical ideas and exciting new talent. The studios, which were also responsible, of course, for producing Coronation Street, the world’s longest-running serial drama, put the North West on the creative and cultural map. But that was half a century ago; the Granada of today “is just another corporate brick in the wall”.
Dive in to Hoyle’s adventures below, and be sure to stick around for our selections of goings-on about to town to make the most of your weekend.
Your Mill briefing
Tenants of an estate in Salford are suffering regular chest infections and living in “dark and dreary” flats after dangerous cladding was stripped from their tower blocks following the Grenfell Tower Fire. The estate’s management company, Together Housing Group, say the repairs are due to be completed by next year. But the ongoing work and issues with mould are affecting tenants’ health. "When I'm going to the GPs, they are saying a lot of people are coming from this block and the other blocks which have got the cladding taken off," one tenant said.
A planning application has been submitted for the next stage of the Castlefield Viaduct “sky park”. The designs look to extend the park from 150 to 350 metres, and build a second entry point by the Mancunian Way. There is no formal date for when the work will start, but the National Trust — who are behind the plans — say there is a clear desire for the sky park in the city, following a one year pilot. The project's ultimate ambition is for the park to reach 1 km long, from Manchester City Centre to Pomona Island.
A former GMP detective has been found guilty of misconduct in public office after the force’s anti-corruption unit found he stole four kilograms of cocaine from police storage for street supply. DC Andrew Talbot was dismissed from the force in 2023, but the investigation into him started in 2020 when CCTV captured him dropping a small bag of cocaine outside his daughter’s school. He will be sentenced on 18 October.
I was a Coronation Street Teddy Boy
By Trevor Hoyle
Dedicated to the memory of Brian Trueman (1932-2024)
Remember Granada TV on Quay Street, its name proudly displayed in glowing crimson, visible as far as the city centre?
My earliest memory of GTV (as it’s known to us who worked there) is of a far more modest, even drab, two-storey structure adjoining a small car park. Believe it or not, this was the main entrance to the studios in the 1950; a smart uniformed commissionaire in shiny peaked cap and broad white belt saluted arrivals from what was little more than a port-a-cabin.
This was the same car park, in fact, where the original cast of Coronation Street, now the world’s longest running soap opera, were photographed in December 1960: Doris Speed and Arthur Leslie (tenants of the Rover’s Return), Violet Carson (Ena Sharples), Pat Phoenix (good-time girl Elsie Tanner), Philip Lowrie (her wastrel son Denis), William Roache (Ken Barlow) and several more. I was standing a few yards away as the photo was being taken, but as a bit-player and not a regular cast member, I wasn’t important enough to be included.
Granada TV was founded by Sidney and Cecil Bernstein in 1954 and shortly after won the Monday-Friday franchise for the north of England. (ABC Television had the weekends.) The brothers owned a chain of cinemas in the south of England, Granada Theatres Ltd, which they’d started in the Thirties. The name “Granada” was Sydney’s idea, after what must have been a memorable holiday he’d enjoyed in southern Spain.
A natural and gifted entrepreneur, Sidney Bernstein had been a friend of Alfred Hitchcock’s since before the war, and they were partners in Transatlantic Pictures, which made the feature film Rope, directed by Hitchcock and starring James Stewart. The story goes that the Bernsteins preferred the northern TV franchise because it would have no impact on audiences for their cinemas, which were all in the south. I don’t buy this, personally, for the obvious reason that cinema audiences throughout the country, both north and south, would be affected by the growing popularity of television in the 1950s, no matter who owned the franchise.
I like to believe instead that Sydney in particular felt an affinity for the industrial north, for its working class solidarity and traditional values; sort of a kinship if you will. As proof of this, he made it a rule that anyone employed by Granada should either live in Manchester or be willing to work there. Maybe it’s a bit of tongue-in-cheek devilry typical of the man, but he’s on record as saying “I think that what Manchester sees today, London will see eventually.”
Granada were the first purpose-built television studios to be opened in the UK, completed in 1956. The Bernsteins, ever the showmen, had the architect include a white, lattice-work concrete transmitter tower as befits a television station, which served no practical purpose — purely symbolic.
From its founding in the Fifties, right up until the late Seventies, Granada was viewed disapprovingly as having radical, even rather dangerous views and political leanings. Programmes such as World in Action and What the Papers Say, plus documentaries spotlighting contentious social issues, reinforced this maverick image. Certainly there were more radical producers working at Granada in the Sixties and Seventies, such as Jim Walker, who wouldn’t be allowed inside a television station today, never mind asked to come up with ideas for programmes.
My first involvement, and employment, with Granada was as an extra in Skyport, which ran for 52 episodes between 1959 and 1960. Set in the arrivals and departure lounges of an airport, each weekly episode was a self-contained storyline with a different cast. The show’s main resident character, travel agency rep Ginger Smart, was played by small and breezy George Moon, who had graduated from comic parts in films to straight actor.
An extra is a piece of human background scenery. On a TV or movie set, there’s a rigid demarcation between those in non-speaking roles and members of the cast — the actors who have lines, even if it’s just a few words. Cast members have a rehearsal schedule, get paid several times more, and are named in the credits. The director will speak to each one about their performance while the Studio or Floor Manager issues instructions to the extras and plots their movements.
At his signal (it was always a man) I’d enter from a doorway, let’s say, and stroll across the set to a news-stand. Peruse the papers for ten seconds, choose one and mime offering payment. Turn and exit by walking behind a pillar. There I’d put on a raincoat, trilby hat, spectacles, get handed a briefcase and brolly. Await another signal, then walk across the lounge and make a pantomime of greeting someone, and the two of us, chatting silently, would head towards the coffee shop.
I appeared in four episodes of Skyport, and as they went out live, never saw myself in any of them.
In the first three months of 1960, I must have been in ten or more series episodes and one-off dramas, mostly for Granada, one or two for the BBC and ABC Television. ABC had converted the Capitol cinema in Didsbury into a TV studio from where the very popular Sunday night “Armchair Theatre” was broadcast live.
I still had a full-time office job at Dunlopillo in Castleton near Rochdale at the time. Unusually, and very generously, they allowed me to take time off, providing it was unpaid, which suited me fine — one day’s pay as an extra was equivalent to three days’ wages. I was quids in.
One “Armchair Theatre” I did was memorable for all the wrong reasons. Last of the Brave was set in France during the First World War. Donald Wolfit (SIR! Donald Wolfit if you don’t mind, renowned Shakespearian thespian) headed the cast, along with Canadian actor Paul Massie. I had bits and pieces throughout, but my main contribution was at the climax near the end where the wounded hero (Massie) has a tender scene with his lover while lying on a stretcher held by two mud-stained battle-scarred orderlies. One of them — bloodstained bandage peeping out from under a steel helmet — was 19-year-old me.
In rehearsal, the camera panned across my head and shoulders and down to Massie gazing into the eyes of his beloved, who happened to be a nurse. The scene lasted perhaps three or four minutes and everything went smoothly. Then came the actual transmission — live — on a Sunday evening. The studio lights were hot and blinding. Sweat was trickling into my eyes. And I could feel it running down inside my uniform sleeves and seeping into my palms, which were already aching from gripping the polished wooden handles of the stretcher. I could also feel, slowly and inexorably, the handles slipping from my grasp under the weight of this hefty actor … I can still experience the gnawing panic, knowing that nine or ten million people were at this precise moment caught up in the tense and whispered close-up of the young lovers. And the bloody stretcher was going to tear itself free, dump the hero in the studio mud and ruin the scene …
It didn’t happen. The hero made it, and so did I — by just a few seconds. As Paul Massie uttered his last line of dialogue, the camera cut away and the actor sprang up to do a quick costume change for the next scene (this was live television, remember) and his sudden movement finally wrenched the stretcher loose from my grasp.
Next morning, I was drinking my elevenses coffee with Barbara, whose desk was behind mine in the large open-plan Dunlopillo office. Barbara was a close friend and the only person there who knew of my television work. A young girl from another department stopped in front of my desk, wide-eyed and somewhat excited, and asked if I’d seen any TV the previous evening. I shook my head. “Well,” she said, “you won’t believe this — ”
A muffled snort came from behind my shoulder. The girl frowned at Barbara, then carried on. “Well. Me and my boyfriend were sitting on the settee watching telly and this soldier in a uniform with a bloody bandage round his head was in it, and I said to Ray, ‘I don’t believe it. There’s a bloke in the next office who’s the dead spitting image of him.’ Honest to god,” she said, “he could have been your twin! What a shame you didn’t see it.”
After she’d gone, I turned to see Barbara, hunched over, her face buried in her hankie. Just as well the young girl didn’t know I’d nearly dropped the damn stretcher. That would have really given her something to talk about.
A few weeks later I had three days’ rehearsal as an extra in Granada’s production of Double Indemnity, based on the Hollywood movie starring Barbara Stanwyck and Edward G Robinson. Donald Pleasance took the Robinson part. Although an established and respected actor in Britain, this was long before Pleasance became internationally famous through the Halloween horror franchise and Fantastic Voyage with Raquel Welch.
There were just four of us extras, attired in American costumes, in a scene set in a “Milk Bar” as the Yanks then called them. The rehearsals seemed endless, and to pass the time and ease the boredom we took to playing 3-card brag in the dressing room. Big stakes: sixpence a bet. Transmission day finally arrived. Immersed in the game and awaiting our cue, someone glanced at the clock and thought it advisable to check how soon our scene was. He was back in minutes, pale and trembling.
The Milk Bar scene — the only one we were in — had come and gone, and since the play was going out live, that was the end of that. We were in deep trouble: the wrath and fury of the casting director would descend. No more work for any of us. We waited with bated breath for the axe to fall … nothing happened. Nothing was ever said. No one even noticed that the two actors had played their scene in an empty Milk Bar.
Weekly Rep
In those far-off days, every city and many towns had their own repertory theatre company. In this part of the north, we had Oldham Coliseum and Bolton Hippodrome doing weekly rep. I did walk-ons with Oldham and the occasional small acting role. In early 1960 they put on Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. I remember carrying a spear and waiting in the wings behind Bill Roache, who later that year would be cast as Ken Barlow in Coronation Street. His then-wife Anna Cropper was also in the play.
Next came a stint at Bolton Hippodrome, where I had a small but notable part in Walter Greenwood’s Saturday Night at the Crown, a comedy drama which had starred Thora Hird in the West End. Set in a single day in a Manchester pub, Arthur Leslie played the inn-keeper, ideal casting for his later role as Rover’s Return landlord Jack Walker.
Granada casting director José Scott came to see the play and chose Arthur, Christine Hargreaves and me to audition for an upcoming soap opera, Florizel Street, the original name of Coronation Street, written by a newcomer called Tony Warren. I was to audition for the part of Dennis Tanner, son of good-time girl Elsie Tanner, played by Pat Phoenix. Philip Lowrie was at the same auction, and he got the part, deservedly so. Philip was much better in the role than I would have been, having a sneering truculence that fitted the character perfectly.
Following the audition, the casting director offered me a small part as a Teddy Boy who causes a ruckus in Florrie Lindley’s corner shop, throwing bags of sugar on the floor and skidding about in it. For those too young to remember, “Teddy Boys,” so-called because they wore outlandish clothing based on Edwardian-era fashion, were the teenage troublemakers of the day. Along with wearing decadent apparel, they lavished loving care on their Brylcreemed quiffs and long sideburns, a style derived from Elvis Presley and American truck drivers (who Elvis had swiped it from in the first place). As for me, I couldn’t grow sideburns, and the makeup assistant had to cut strips from a wig and stick a piece on either side of my face.
There was no technical method of recording television drama in those days, apart from on film, which was very expensive, and so my appearance in Coronation Street (Episode 9) went out live in the first week of January, 1961. I still remember travelling home on the train and thinking, “Well, it’s gone out now and I’ll never be able to watch it. Wonder if it was any good? And will it last as a soap opera?”
I’d now made the gigantic leap from lowly extra to cast member, and I was being offered tiny speaking parts. For one line of dialogue (“How old were you then?”) in a Granada comedy thriller called Knight Errant, I earned £18, double the weekly wage at the time. With it I bought an engagement ring for my then girlfriend, now wife.
Soon after I switched careers and landed a “proper” job, as my dad would say, in advertising. For the time being, my lifelong love affair with Granada Television was on hold.
“What’s On”
Dave Wareing was an account executive at Taylor Advertising, across Quay Street from Granada. One day I called in to see Dave to inquire if he had any freelance copywriting to offer. (I was stoney-broke at the time, having recently returned to the UK after living abroad.) No, he hadn’t, Dave said, unfortunately. We chatted over coffee and he mentioned he’d been for a drink the evening before with a friend, Mike Scott, Controller of Local Programmes at Granada. Mike told him they were planning a new weekly arts and entertainments programme to be called “What’s On” and they were looking for a writer/presenter to front it.
This was a long time ago, and I can’t recall whether Dave suggested I get in touch with Mike Scott or if it was my idea. The upshot was that I did make an approach and was asked to write a five-minute script; I also agreed to a screen test delivering it. There were four of us at the final audition, one of whom I knew: the artist Walter Kershaw, celebrated for his large-scale outdoor murals, including the gigantic Man United panorama at Old Trafford.
For the camera test I borrowed what I thought was a “trendy” jacket from a friend which had gold thread in the weave (this was the early 70s, remember), gaudy enough to hurt the eyes. It was also a size too small, so it felt like being strapped in a strait-jacket and I could hardly move my arms.
I also made the beginner’s classic mistake in front of the camera: smirking and leering in the belief I was projecting a charismatic persona and irresistible charm the viewers would fall in love with. When the producer Marian Nelson made me sit next to her and watch this grotesque, gurning performance in the editing suite, she didn’t need to say a word. At the end all she did was turn to me and raise her eyebrows. I nodded meekly. I might even have blushed.
All the most accomplished television performers do very little, or nothing at all, in fact: they speak to the camera as they would to a friend over a drink in the local pub. Marian must have seen something beyond the simpering grotesque worth taking a gamble on.
Mike Scott offered me £25 a week to write and present “What’s On”. And this was for a day and a half’s work, so it wasn’t too bad. When I said yes, I was happy to do it, but I wanted double that amount, Mike nearly fell off his chair. Then he laughed, looked to Marian, and they both nodded. The deal was done.
Although I didn’t know Mike Scott personally, our paths had criss-crossed over the years. Back in 1959 I was an extra in a Granada drama, The Bush and the Tree, and Mike was the floor manager. Twelve months after that I did my episode of Coronation Street, playing a Teddy Boy, with Mike as director. Fast-forward ten years after that and he’d climbed the greasy pole to become head of local programmes at Granada.
Some thought Mike Scott superficial, a brash and flash southerner. But I always liked him, and was taken by his sardonic sense of humour. He was friendly and easy to get along with and never took himself too seriously, compared to some of the humourless goons in senior management.
Ray Gosling was of another breed entirely, sort of a roving reporter given free rein to pursue quirky human interest stories of his own choosing, which he did in a unique and idiosyncratic style. On camera he appeared clumsy and bumbling, even amateurish at times, but Ray knew exactly what he was doing, and the results were mesmerising.
Granada had an internal TV channel in every office showing what was being rehearsed and recorded in the studios downstairs. After my very first “What’s On” was taped I was sitting with Marian Nelson and David Richards in our second-floor office when the door burst open and Ray Gosling bounded in. He planted both elbows on the desk where I was sitting, propped his chin on the palms of his hands, and fixed me with a piercing gaze. I can’t remember what he said, or if he said anything at all; I was too taken aback at being confronted so abruptly by someone I only knew off the telly.
Being rather naive, it was some time later that I twigged what lay behind this quite bizarre behaviour. Ray had seen the recording, liked what he saw and was checking out the possibilities for the future. In short, did I bat for the same team as him? Nothing further was said and we never referred to the encounter again, even after we became friends over the next three decades.
I carried on doing “What’s On” once a week over the next two to three years. Most of them were recorded, a few were done live. I enjoyed writing the scripts to a deadline, the buzz of performing to camera, the whole experience in fact. I also enjoyed being recognised in public — in the early days, anyway.
We covered any and every kind of event, large and small, taking place in the North West, ranging from major stage productions and classical concerts to more modest local ones such as author book-signings, art exhibitions, children’s events and even amateur productions. Usually a clip from a current film release ended the show. We tended to shy away from promoting big-name recording stars because they had money to fund a publicity machine, and instead favoured lesser-known artists and groups on the way up.
One idea of mine was to interview two middle-aged spinster sisters who had transformed their Liverpool home into a shrine to Elvis Presley. Every square inch of the small terraced house — doors, walls, staircase, ceilings — was covered with glossy photos, cuttings, LP sleeves and other sacred memorabilia. The sisters had been several times to see the King onstage in Las Vegas and a prized possession, kept under a glass dome, was a teddy bear on which Elvis had wiped his sweaty chest.
I learnt a valuable lesson from making this short film. A producer with World in Action (their office was a few doors along from ours) stopped me in the corridor and offered congratulations on the piece and my role as interviewer and presenter. Playing the cool dude, I sort of shrugged it off as if compliments bored me. Before turning away he tapped me on the shoulder. “When someone praises you for something you’ve done,” he said, “don’t come the mock modesty shit. Accept and value their praise for what it’s worth. You might even thank them.” A piece of advice I’ve never forgotten — ie, don’t be such a dumb, tedious prick.
Film Exchange
Granada’s studio and eight-floor office complex was surrounded by Victorian slum property, cobbled streets and empty lots. The River Irwell and the Rochdale canal swirled nearby. Sometime in the sixties the company converted one of these ancient buildings into an experimental theatre venue to encourage younger writers and actors. They named it “The Stables.” This building’s biggest impact, however, wasn’t experimental or even artistic; the main thing was that it had a bar, which Sidney Bernstein had never allowed in the main building. It was said (and could be true) that Granada was the only television studio in the country — including the BBC — not to have a licensed bar on the premises.
The Stables was never a favoured watering hole with GTV staff. Most of us went along Quay Street to the Film Exchange, a private club not open to the general public. Anyone from Granada could buy a drink there and have a meal. Some of the Coronation Street cast were regulars, as were performers such as Thora Hird, comedian Jimmy Jewel, and Judi Dench’s husband Michael Williams, who was co-starring in a comedy series.
A favourite variety artiste of mine was Hylda Baker. (“She knows, ya know!”) Like a starstruck fan, I once approached Hylda as she was standing at the bar, drinking alone, and gushed my praises. She thanked me politely, and I didn’t even have the gumption and good grace to buy this wonderfully funny lady a brown ale.
As mentioned earlier, What the Papers Say was a flagship programme for Granada, broadcast weekly on all ITV regions throughout the country. Some of the leading political journalists of that era presented it, including Brian Inglis, Bernard Levin, Michael Frayn and Harold Evans. These were respected writers with strong opinions, and the idea was to give a personal slant to how the big stories of the day were reported in the national press.
When the February 1974 General Election between Edward Heath and Harold Wilson was announced, somebody proposed we do a “What the Local Papers Say” version of election coverage. With the help of a researcher I compiled a 15-minute round-up of newspapers in the North West and we recorded it. Possibly we persuaded Brian Trueman, who read the newspaper extracts on the national show, to read ours too.
We all felt pretty chuffed with the result. But the day before transmission, it was pulled. We were never told or found out why. A rumour went around that somebody in senior management had objected that the tone was “too left-wing,” which was a ridiculous criticism when the entire purpose of the programme was to give a personal and forthright point of view, not just a bland and boring summary.
So much for Granada’s reputation as being more radical and politically outspoken than other TV companies. Seems it still drew the line at broadcasting certain opinions; or perhaps the company had lost its cutting edge in the twenty years since its founding.
Wrong Choice
We all make mistakes, and my rampant ego was to blame for one of mine. Flattered to be asked, and against my better judgement, I agreed to take part in a summer escapade called “OK!” that was recorded in a variety of North West locations. This was a forlorn and misguided attempt to transplant “flower power” from the golden beaches of seventies San Francisco to damp and gloomy Lancashire. Painful in preparation and doomed in execution, it definitely lived down to the naffness of its title.
One of many low points happened as we were returning from location filming in Southport when the producer and myself nearly came to blows. It was over something so silly and trivial I’ve forgotten what it was. After a long and tiring day we stopped at a pub for a meal and drinks. The gent’s was across a yard at the rear of the pub, and later in the evening on the way back I was confronted by the producer who stood in my way and squared up. He didn’t exactly snarl “Put up yer mitts” but that was his intent.
Neither of us were brawlers, both of us had been drinking, and after some pathetic pushing and shoving we were pulled apart by members of the crew. It just about summed up the whole fatuous enterprise and taught me a lesson: to be more discriminating about my choice of projects in the future.
Decision Time
While working at GTV I’d published two novels in paperback. A third had been accepted by a publisher launching a new imprint, Futura, as one of its first titles.
Due out in 1975, Rule of Night was a documentary-style novel about gangs of skinheads in my home town of Rochdale. It was based on actual events reported in the local press of rival gangs causing mayhem at Spotland, the Dale football ground, and menacing passers-by in the streets.
The impending publication forced me into making a decision. One option was to carry on at Granada, writing and presenting “What’s On,” which left time for other work. The money was good — and guaranteed — which was the last thing that could be said for a freelance author reliant on book advances and royalties.
Or I could give up television altogether and focus my time and energy exclusively on writing fiction. A no-brainer, obviously. Keep taking the money, you idiot, and do the other stuff on the side. Best of both worlds. No problem.
Except for a couple of factors. I had always wanted to be a writer ever since I was about nine or ten and had devoured all the Billy Bunter stories, all the Just William stories, and all the Biggles books. The other mitigating factor was the act of appearing on television itself and becoming a media personality recognised in public. As you can imagine, this is beguilingly seductive and hard to resist. Very soothing to the ego. I was being offered more TV work, which meant more recognition and more money, and I could foresee the time when the cumulative pampering and flattering media exposure took over and swamped any of my other goals or ambitions.
I’ll give an instance, which might sound perverse and even rather pathetic. As a writer of fiction you need to watch people and observe their actions, dissect their emotions, eavesdrop on their conversations. And to do so unobtrusively. Being recognised in public as a “face off the telly” made that impossible. I used to cringe when I walked into a pub or restaurant and saw people nudging their neighbour, frowning as they tried to recall who that bloke was. In the end it became so bloody annoying that I used to drive over the border into Yorkshire where they didn’t receive Granada programmes (technically anyway, though there was an overlap) so I could relax and have a meal or a drink incognito.
The bottom line was simply that applying oneself seriously and diligently to the career of a professional author whilst working in TV was, in my view anyway, incompatible. One of them had to go.
A New Beginning
After my departure, “What’s On” transmogrified into “So It Goes,” a predominantly pop music showcase presented by a brash newcomer called Tony Wilson. One of the first groups it featured, I recall, was Elvis Costello and the Attractions. Tony was also a huge fan and proselytiser of Punk, which to my ears was a bagful of noise. Still is.
Tony was an engaging chap, a relatively new arrival who had started out as a reporter on the teatime “Granada Reports” programme. It was clear from the start that he had talent and was driven by vaulting ambition and dreams of telly stardom, never mind what for. Tony was seething with envy, I recall, when Anna Ford arrived at Granada, a novice to television, and after the briefest stint as a fledgling presenter was snapped up by the BBC to front their weekly science programme “Tomorrow’s World.” From Television Centre in London no less! Desperate to move on from regional television, Tony found it difficult to accept Anna’s rapid and seemingly effortless rise to national prominence while he still languished, his talents unappreciated, in the provinces.
Income from my novels wasn’t brilliant, and even though I’d signed contracts with publishers for new books, I needed money. I approached Bill Podmore, executive producer of Coronation Street, and he commissioned what was termed a “ghost” script. The idea was to try out new writers with actual storylines and see how their scripts compared to those written by the regular team. I sweated over mine and thought I’d done a pretty decent job. Bill didn’t, and I wasn’t taken on.
I kept in touch with some of those I’d worked with at Granada, including Bob Greaves, who’d been a fixture on Granada Reports, and was now hosting a live lunch-time programme from Liverpool. When my novel Vail, published by John Calder, came out in 1984, I rang Bob and he invited me over for an interview. In the Green Room I was introduced to Davey Jones and Mickey Dolenz, on a UK revivals tour of the Monkees. The two couldn’t have been more different. Jones, who was English, originally from Manchester (he’d been in some early episodes of Coronation Street) possessed an ego on steroids; he couldn’t have been more snotty and disagreeable if he’d tried. Mickey Dolenz, drummer and lead vocal in the band, was charming and friendly and interested enough to ask about the novel I was there to promote, while Jones stared boredly out of the window, tapping his fingers. A genuinely lovely bloke, Dolenz, at the time of writing the group’s only surviving member.
Comparing and contrasting Granada then and now is an interesting exercise. Fifty-odd years ago it was the most exciting and innovative regional TV company in the UK. It earned a deserved reputation as a hotbed of talent with new ideas, putting this region on the creative and cultural map. As well as a vibrant Manchester music scene it helped promote and publicise, Granada was embedded in and emblematic of the North West to such an extent that the term “GRANADALAND” was coined and used as a station ident.
But that was half a century ago, in its wild impetuous youth. The Granada of today is just another corporate brick in the wall, cosily ensconced alongside the BBC in Media City at Salford Quays. A safe pair of hands that won’t ruffle any establishment feathers.
Come the 2000s and it was the last hurrah for many who had spent the major part of their working lives at the bottom of Quay Street. Two or three times a year, upwards of twenty of us ex-GTV veterans would gather for a convivial lunch at Dmitri’s Greek restaurant on Deansgate. A few of them, maybe half a dozen, were on-screen faces from a bygone era — Bob Greaves, Ray Gosling, Jim Walker, Brian Trueman, Hoyle-somebody-or-other. Names and faces that would be unknown to today’s TV audience.
Anne Reid and Alan Rothwell, who had been in Coronation Street in its very early days, turned up occasionally, though I don’t recall Judy Finegan and Richard Madeley, both members of the local news team in the seventies, ever attending.
Another connection I had with Granada — the publishing division rather than the television station — led to a very interesting encounter. In the Seventies, Granada’s paperback imprint, Panther Books, published three of my SF novels as the “Q Series.” My editor at Panther, Nick Webb, heard I was going to California on vacation and suggested while I was there I get in touch with an American SF writer they published. This turned out to be Philip K Dick, whose novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was in the process of being adapted into the Ridley Scott film Blade Runner. I went to California and I visited one of the world’s greatest science fiction writers in his poky apartment in Santa Ana. But that’s a story for another day.
Dedication
I was in the later stages of writing this piece when I heard the very sad news that Brian Trueman had died, aged 92. Though I never worked alongside Brian, I got to know him as a fellow presenter at Granada in the 70s, and even more so twenty years later when he organised the lunches at Dmitri’s on Deansgate for ex-GTV staff. Brian was one of the nicest, most generous and genuine people you could ever hope to meet, inside television or outside. Affable and good natured, the day lit up when Brian was around. Funny and witty without ever being cruel or unkind. Not just a Trueman, a true gentleman and a pleasure to have known. He will be sadly missed by many.
Our weekend to do list
Friday
🎭 Hope Mill Theatre in Ancoats is showing Husk, a haunting play about a couple who stay at her dad’s house overlooking the Blackpool sea, whose dementia and fragility is making him increasingly paranoid and uncertain. Tickets here.
🩰 Tchaikovsky’s great romantic ballet Swan Lake is being performed by the Crown Ballet Production Company at the Albert Halls in Bolton. Get tickets here.
Saturday
🎻 Manchester Baroque presents Battle, Storm and Fanfares, a selection of Vivaldi’s vivid depictions of a storm at sea, and Biber’s Battalia, followed by Bach’s gentle Brandenburg Concerto. They’re performing at the Hallé from 7.30pm — get tickets here.
🪄 The Museum of Illusions has opened on Market Street, filled with winding corridors, immersive rooms with optical illusions and interactive exhibits designed to pique your curiosity. Find out more here.
Sunday
🕺 Traplord, an Olivier award-winning show about the stereotyping of black men in Western society, is showing at Aviva Studios for just three days. The show was created by the multidisciplinary artist Ivan Michael Blackstock, who has choreographed for Beyoncé and received rave reviews for Traplord upon its debut. Tickets here.
🎉 Cheetham Cultural Festival is an annual celebration of “the many cultures found in one of the most diverse areas of the UK”, with plenty of events across the Ukrainian Folk Art Museum, the Jewish Museum and the Khizra Mosque, including tours, foodie groups and table tennis competitions. View the full programme here.
I thought I'd just skim through this in my inbox but I really got into the writing :) might see if I can find some of those scifi books
A fantastic piece of writing. Brought back many early childhood memories of 70's Granada TV. Gave me a smile for Friday afternoon!