Tony Wilson by David Nolan

Tony Wilson
by David Nolan

During the flood of tributes to Tony Wilson and his impact on music, his parallel life in television was largely overlooked. Author David Nolan – himself a former Granada TV producer who worked in the same office as Wilson – looks back at the lives and TV times of Tony Wilson.

Chris Pye, Tony Wilson's former boss at Granada Television during the 1970's and the producer of So It Goes puts it like this: 'Tony didn't describe things in great detail most of the time. Tony just came in with a kind of wave of enthusiasm... "Hey man! I saw this great gig!" It was the enthusiasm that drove us really.'

Since Wilson's death in August 2007, eyes have been justifiably moist about his enthusiasm for music – or more precisely his talent for articulating his enthusiasm for the musical talents of others.

Mr Manchester, though he was born in the separate city of Salford, was still enthusing till the very end, with shouty St Albans techno-rockers Enter Shikari being one of the final acts to benefit from his blessing. 'Never seen anything like it since the Sex Pistols,' Wilson told me during lunch in December 2006, the last time I was to see him.

(Just so we are clear, in case that sounded a bit name-droppy, Wilson wasn't my mate. For a long time I was convinced that he didn't like me. He was a colleague who was very kind and enthusiastic about some of the things I did. Some other things I did he thought were shit. There you go.)

'Un-ber-fuckin-lievable,' was his verdict on Enter Shikari's recent gig at Manchester's Music Box. Lead singer Rou Reynolds had spent one song of ES's set hanging from the rafters of the venue once known as Rafters. Geddit? Wilson had packaged up yet another neat piece of pop culture history for our benefit. That's what he did.

But as well as his position as Professional Music Enthusiast, Anthony Howard Wilson had another career - that of a television presenter and journalist. Being a journalist was something he seemed very proud of; Wilson never tired of reminding you that he was the former FOC at Granada... the Father of the Chapel being the head of the journalists' union within a newsroom who is tasked with acting as negotiator between journalists and management.

I would have loved to have been in on those meetings.

But television was almost a footnote in the obituaries – he did some telly and they showed the hang gliding clip made famous in 24 Hour Party People or a bit from So It Goes – but Wilson's TV life was an extremely varied one. Who could forget Channel 5's Topranko!?

It also continued as long as it feasibly could before his death with work for Manchester's cheap and cheerful Channel M. But you always felt his heart was elsewhere. Probably underneath the familiar red lights of the Granada TV sign just off Deansgate across the other side of the city. 'I'm a Granada boy,' he would later say.

After a brief stint at ITN, Wilson joined Granada in 1973 at its headquarters on Quay Street in Manchester. From the moment he walked through the reception he became what he essentially remained: a big fish in a medium-sized pond. He was a journeyman. For every So It Goes there was a Sports Exchange, for each Other Side of Midnight there would be a Flying Start. That's what telly is like. The question is... dare we ask it... was Wilson any good at his day job?

'Wilson had a weird energy and a fantastic ability to persuade the powers-that- be,' offers Paul Morley, who admired his ability to fill the TV screen with weird and wonderful bands, often at teatime, during the 1970's.

As a teenager in Stockport, Morley could sense the weird juxtaposition of seeing the same bloke presenting a piece about striking council workers ... then introducing the Sex Pistols. 'Tony Wilson in the North West in '76, '77, '78 was like John Stapleton or Richard Madeley,' says Morley. 'He still had the long hair and the flares and the blouson jacket.'

Kieron Collins – now an entertainment executive at the BBC - was Wilson's last boss at Granada. As Controller of Regional Programmes Collins found himself in the peculiar position of being in charge of someone who was essentially his hero. 'At one point we had a meeting after I'd just gone into the job of Granada Regional Controller,' Collins told me. 'I was sitting in my office wearing a suit wondering how this all happened and Tony Wilson came in, we had a chat and as he got up to leave he said: "Well thanks boss" and it completely threw me, because I never ever thought there would ever be a moment when Tony Wilson would call me "boss" because I had grown up with Tony Wilson, thinking he was all the things that television should be... completely uncontainable and completely of his own kind... someone who ignored the rules to the point of being cavalier... and I absolutely loved him for it. So to find myself in the position of being his boss was completely strange. I think we both knew it was ludicrous on both sides but we went through the motions of it.'

You always knew when Wilson was about to arrive in the open plan office that housed Granada's newsroom and its Regional features department – you would hear his dreaded phone with it's awful Eminem ringtone wailing down the corridor. The din would continue all afternoon, usually swiftly followed by Wilson effing and jeffing down the line at some unfortunate.

'I think he was brilliant a genius I think he was completely unpolished in the way that television presenters currently are and it's to his credit that he was like that,' adds Collins. 'There are an awful lot who are glossy and have the right hairstyle and can turn from one camera to another... Tony was never like that. I think he was a complete natural as a television presenter... I don't think he was the best television presenter... but he was completely natural.'

Effing would bring about Wilson's final call at Granada, after one of the daftest incidents in an already quite daft TV career. During the 3.25pm news bulletin and thinking he was off air and talking to technical staff in the control room while a taped item was playing, Wilson said 'fucking'... you don't get that with Natasha Kaplinsky. By this time I had taken over as FOC and I was called into Kieron Collins office to be told that Wilson had been suspended. That's the thing about telly – every day is odder than the last.

'Every moment of my time being Tony Wilson's boss was totally enjoyable and utterly surreal - on a day to day basis it threw up something that you least expected... and that was one of them. He knew full well he shouldn't have done it. He was completely charming about the whole thing... he'd broken a rule. The irony was that it's a word that you wouldn't blink about Tony saying in conversation. A word he used frequently in conversation becomes completely unacceptable when you put an afternoon television camera in front of him. But he made it utterly easy for me to say to him "We have to suspend you..."

'The problem was... the fact that you suspend Tony for saying fuck actually creates more headlines and creates more furore than if you'd completely ignored it. And because he was his own man and he was this maverick character, you could never win. Waving your finger at Tony and telling him off just made you look like a bit of a dick. Because he was so different to anyone before or since in that role.'

Not long after 'Fucking- gate' Wilson stepped down, citing his political commitments tied to plans for a regional parliament. Although he would return to TV on Channel M – as well as pulling in other broadcasting gigs with BBC Radio Manchester and XFM – it would never be quite the same.

He did a lot for Greater Manchester and the North West did Tony Wilson. He made some great TV programmes as well; not just the hang gliding stuff, and the rock and roll; check out the skill with which he navigated his way through the debate show Granada Upfront - it makes the Kyles and the Goddards of this world look like amateurs – or his wonderful series about the industrial revolution which won a Royal Television Society Award (beating me into second place... bastard). Great telly.

That's what Wilson was. Great telly. People forget that.

David Nolan is the author of I Swear I Was There and Bernard Sumner: Confusion. He worked for Granada Television from 1992 to 2005 as a journalist and producer.