Parky: My Autobiography (17 page)

We soon concluded our filming in Turkey and I was contemplating my holiday when Tim Hewat rang.‘Bit of trouble in Cyprus. Get over there as quickly as you can,’ he said. We filmed for a few days and I went to the airport to send our report back to the office. In those days you couldn’t bounce the report in by satellite. You had to doorstep BA pilots and crew and ask if they would take the film back to England.

Having completed this transaction, I was plotting ways of recommencing my holiday when I received another phone call from Tim Hewat. Trouble in Zanzibar. An uprising. Get there immediately.

I said, ‘Do you have any idea how far Cyprus is from Zanzibar?’

Tim Hewat replied, without pause, ‘I have just measured it on a map and it’s only a couple of inches.’

We eventually arrived in Dar es Salaam, in what was then Tanganyika, to be told that the island of Zanzibar had been closed to the world. We went to what we were assured was the local press club and there encountered a young and worryingly bleary eyed Australian pilot who said he would fly us into Zanzibar but wouldn’t stop. This meant he would taxi on the runway long enough for us to hop off and then he would make his getaway. Which explains how we came to be standing on the tarmac at Zanzibar Airport, surrounded by soldiers in combat uniform and blue peaked hats who were not pleased to see us.

We were arrested, taken to a hotel and incarcerated in the bar, along with one or two other journalists who had sneaked into the country, including one who had hired a dhow and had swum the last mile or two through shark-infested waters.

They kept us locked up for a day or two until I managed to negotiate permission to film the aftermath of the revolution, which meant being closely escorted by a military guard. The soldiers were sullen and suspicious with us, hostile and brutal to the prisoners we tried to film in a barbed-wire compound.

After twenty-four hours we were put in the back of a jeep and driven through a cemetery, past freshly dug graves, before being taken down to the port where a Royal Navy ship had arrived to take away British nationals caught up in the revolution. We sailed to the mainland under a magnificent African sky illuminated by the biggest, brightest stars I have ever seen. We slept on deck and, as we dipped deep to Mombasa, watched a Doris Day movie on a white sheet the crew had rigged over a clothes line. We hired a plane, flew down the Rift Valley to Nairobi, and caught a flight to London where I was interviewed by ITN News as the first journalist out of Zanzibar.

When I got back to Granada I was met by Tim Hewat who asked if I had enjoyed my holiday.

The managing director, Sir Denis Forman, said he had seen me on the ITN News and maybe I should think about a career in front of camera. The idea was I should front Hewat’s new programme
The World Tonight
. Correspondents from all over the world would broadcast live into a studio set-up where the presenter would be found in front of a collection of clocks each depicting a different time zone. With the satellite technology of today, it might have been a good idea. In the sixties, with the industry in the Stone Age, I looked like a man standing in front of a lot of clocks doing a radio programme. The programme was never made, which in those days wasn’t regarded as a disaster. It simply meant we invented a replacement.

What made Granada such an exciting company to work for was that it didn’t dwell on failure. Moreover it discouraged analysis as to why a programme didn’t work and regarded looking back as a waste of time. It ploughed on, like the pioneer it was, constantly exploring the limits of the new and exhilarating business of television. Barrie Heads and David Plowright were encouraging facilitators but there is no doubt the gentle but firm hand steering the company belonged to Sir Denis Forman.

He carried with him an unruffled authority. He had been a major in the Royal Kents and fought in one of the bloodiest battles of World War Two at Monte Cassino. His lower left leg was shattered and amputated below the knee. He was part of a remarkable generation that survived a bloody war, had witnessed its horrors and knew something we didn’t. What that generation experienced shaped their lives ever after and gave them a sense of priority, a balance, which made them rounded and fully fledged human beings.

As a newcomer, I had been invited to dinner with the bosses in the Penthouse, on the top floor of the Manchester studios. I was given a place at Sir Denis’s side. At the end of the first course I felt a foot on mine and the application of gentle pressure. Was this some kind of Granada ritual, a test perhaps? This was, after all, the company created by Sidney Bernstein, a man whose list of people banned from appearing on his television station included men with beards and those wearing pocket handkerchieves or bow ties.

The pressure continued, applied more heavily until I was in such pain I wrenched my foot clear. I looked at my host who seemed totally unaware. I sought guidance from David Plowright who was sitting next to me. I whispered what had happened.

‘I think the boss is playing footsie with me,’ I said.

‘You daft bugger, he’s trying to find the bell press on the floor to tell the butler to bring the next course,’ he said.

I decided I would stay at Granada.

A couple of years later I celebrated my thirtieth birthday with a hangover. I can’t remember the event but according to Leslie Woodhead I arrived in the office wearing dark glasses and looking unwell.

‘For God’s sake what’s up?’ Leslie said.

‘It’s my thirtieth birthday. Life is over,’ I said.

If we eliminate the depressing effect of alcohol on the human personality, there was substance to my statement. I was beginning to feel restless. It started when I took a call one day from Donald Baverstock, who was producing the BBC’s
Tonight
programme. This was the one BBC programme we all admired. Everyone who worked on
Scene at 6.30
looked with admiration and envy at its sleek style, particularly at its stable of wonderful reporters, including the incomparable Alan Whicker, Kenneth Allsop, Trevor Philpot and the blessed Fyfe Robertson.

Baverstock came straight to the point. This was a courtesy call to inform me he intended to approach Peter Eckersley and invite him to join
Tonight
as a reporter. I told him I couldn’t stop him but we would be reluctant to lose Peter. When I informed Peter of the impending offer, he asked me what he should do. ‘Bite their bloody hand off,’ I said.

I had no doubt he would have been brilliant on the programme. He gave the world an irreverent sidelong glance, wrote beautifully and had an attractive studio manner. In the end he decided against going and went on to become head of drama before dying from cancer in 1981 aged forty-six. He was one of those human beings who, as you remember him, you find yourself smiling at the memory. His friend Jack Rosenthal told a story at Peter’s funeral, which summed him up. Jack said he visited Peter in hospital when he was dying and, at the end of the visit, asked his friend if there was anything he could get him. Peter beckoned him close and whispered, ‘There’s a lovely blue handbag in Kendal Milnes I’ve had my eye on.’

After Baverstock’s call, delighted though I was for Peter and happy my judgment had been confirmed, because I had persuaded him to join Granada, I also felt envious and angry at the BBC. I asked myself why they hadn’t chosen me, why I wasn’t invited to join
Tonight
. I make no excuse for this selfish reaction except to say ambition often tramples on decent manners.

On the face of it I had everything I ever needed at Granada. The work was fascinating; I had never worked with such a talented and agreeable collection of people. We had just bought our first house in Cheshire. Nicholas, our second son, had been born in a hospital in Knutsford, much to the annoyance of my father, who had failed this time in his attempt to kidnap Mary and take her to Yorkshire. He was only slightly comforted by the thought that at least the baby had been born in Cheshire and not Lancashire. Had that happened, I would have considered keeping the birth a secret from him. Moreover I had just been asked by Harold Evans, a journalist I had known on the
Manchester Evening News
, now newly arrived at
The Sunday Times
, if I would write a regular column about sport. It was the start of an entirely new career, which sustained and delighted me for the next forty years.

It gave me an excuse, as if I needed it, to spend more time at Old Trafford and develop a blossoming relationship with Sir Matt Busby and a young footballer who was to prove one of the greatest there has ever been, George Best. My relationship with Manchester United started when Tommy Taylor, a gifted centre forward whom I watched at Barnsley, was transferred there. Busby knew what he was doing. The young raw talent was transformed into an inter national player of real quality. Then came the Munich air crash and Tommy was one who perished.

I reported the first game Manchester United played after Munich. It was against Sheffield Wednesday and the makeshift team, held together by a veteran maestro called Ernie Taylor, began a revival that formed an imperishable bond between the club and anyone fortunate enough to witness it. The
Guardian
reporter said,‘Tonight a Phoenix took flight.’

Then I saw George Best’s first game for Manchester United. Matt had told us to watch out for something special but none of us was prepared for what we saw. West Bromwich Albion was the opposition, Graham Williams, a nuggety Welsh international full back, marking George. I wrote at the time that Best had the physique of a toothpick, but the heart of a bull terrier. He beat Williams every way up and celebrated his domination by pushing the ball through the full back’s legs, nutmegging him. Because of this display of showboating, Graham Williams was in a mood seriously to foreshorten Best’s career. Sir Matt wisely removed him at half-time.

Many years later I was with George when Mr Williams approached. ‘Do me a favour George and stand still so I can see your face,’ he said.

George asked why.

‘Because all I ever saw of you when we played against you was your arse disappearing down the touchline,’ he replied.

We filmed a story about George, telling of a young soccer player living in digs, with ten sackloads of unopened fan mail threatening to damage the floor of his bedroom. It was the birth of the ‘Fifth Beatle’, star of that well-known musical
Orgy and Best
, the ‘First Rock ’n’ Roll Footballer’ and, even as we celebrated his arrival with cheesy headlines, we had no idea where it would lead. We simply rejoiced, without a thought of the sadness to come. It was not a time to be solemn about anything. Didn’t I have the best job in the world?

My television fame gave me the recognition that opens doors. I soon learned the trick was to enjoy the moment but never be seduced by it. It helped having been a producer in that I knew the disparaging things people said in the control room about performers. When you know that, you tend not to get too big-headed. I was also just one of a glut of famous faces. Granada in the North had given all my colleagues an experience of that moment when you are recognised, so no one was allowed to feel special or singled out.

Where else could I eat in a canteen with Annie Walker and Ena Sharples and then move to my studio to hear a young Dionne Warwick sing songs by a brace of promising new composers – Burt Bacharach and Hal David – or meet Nina Simone, Sarah Vaughan, The Hollies, Dizzy Gillespie, Dusty Springfield and Kenny Lynch, then, as now, our most swinging singer.

At that time, Pat Phoenix, who played Elsie Tanner in
Coronation Street
, was the most famous and desired woman in Britain. Elsie was the fantasy figure for any man who ever fell in love with a barmaid. Nearly twenty million people watched
Coronation Street
in those days but the salaries paid to the cast bore no relation to the show’s commercial worth to Granada. Still don’t. I remember Mary and I having dinner with Pat in her cottage as she bellyached about Granada’s stinginess. She said the cast was expected to open Granada TV shops, a task she found particularly irksome, especially since the actors didn’t receive a fee for so doing.

‘They must give you something,’ I said.

‘Come upstairs and I’ll show you,’ she said.

In the attic she revealed a stack of TV sets. It looked like the storeroom of a Granada shop.

‘Another bloody telly, that’s what we get,’ she said.

It was the best of times, but I was edgy.

Then, in the course of one week, I received two phone calls that changed the course of my career. The first was from Desmond Wilcox, the reporter I had worked with on
ABC of the North
.

He had been making a name for himself as a current-affairs producer at the BBC in Manchester and was about to produce a new programme,
Man Alive
. Would I be interested?

Next I was called by Paul Fox, then head of current affairs at the BBC. He wondered if I would like to meet with Derrick Amoore, producer of another new show,
24 Hours
, to discuss maybe joining as a reporter. The front men were Cliff Michelmore and Kenneth Allsopp. The team included Fyfe Robertson, Julian Pettifer and Trevor Philpot.

I thanked Desmond Wilcox and agreed to meet the
24 Hours
people. At Lime Grove I had a long and boozy lunch with Paul and Derrick and they offered me a job. I was excited but terrified. This was a different league and I wondered if I might be inadequate to the demands. As it turned out my fears were well founded, but it took a while to find out.

In the meantime, I was exhilarated at the thought of working with my heroes. It meant moving to London. Mary, with her customary patient acceptance of disruption and change, made things easy for me.

My bosses at Granada were not happy. Sir Denis Forman talked me through my decision to leave with his customary easy charm until I told him that, much as I loved Granada, nothing they could offer would make me stay. Such was the family feel at Granada in those days I genuinely felt a bit of a heel, as if telling my parents I wanted to leave home. I was therefore not surprised when Sir Denis told me that people who left the company were, generally speaking, not welcomed back.