Rob McLoughlin recounts the private sayings of Tony Wilson over 25 years.

The year was 1982 and the proclamation, which was delivered with no equivocation or hesitation, came from the lips of a man who was about to prime the city’s creative engine and export its innovative and often brilliant wares across the country and the world.

The fact that a glance outside to the rain soaked pavements around Granada’s Quay Street empire and across to the dereliction all around the city would have left you with a very different impression was irrelevant; that would all change - he had no doubt.

The Prophet had spoken and he was right – The Hacienda would kick start a thirst for regeneration which would become unstoppable and Factory Records would spark a musical revolution as profound as Epstein’s in Liverpool.

The fact that the young good looking visionary (take a look at the shots from ‘So It Goes’ and you can see that his was a face destined for TV) was delivering this rhetoric dressed in a cape, reminiscent of the one Basil Rathbone always wore as Sherlock Holmes, and with a large leather saddle bag, which seemingly contained all his important worldly possessions, seemed to be, well, just par for the course.

I forgot to ask if the caped, saddled prophet had painted his toe nails, I knew his socks were odd colours but again that was normal. Last year (2006) I did hold his left foot during a live BBC Radio interview and asked why he did he always paint his toe nails?

The answer was revelatory. ‘It annoys people’ he confessed and ‘annoying people’ was part of what it meant to be Tony Wilson or Anthony Wilson or then, for a period, Anthony H. Wilson, to distinguish himself from the writer Anthony Burgess whose real name was, of course, Tony Wilson!

I recently got on a train from Euston to Manchester and a stranger came up and asked me; ‘Tony Wilson, what is it?’

I laughed and promised I’d get back to him as soon as I knew but it may take years.

But I did know, Tony was cocooned inside a TV company which had enough mavericks around to make a dozen westerns.

They saw a kindred spirit in Wilson and he was at times encouraged and scorned in equal measure for being the bad boy.

They knew that he believed in excellence and beauty as aspirational goals and believed that if anyone could do something, it probably isn’t worth doing – it has to be better, unique, challenging and sometimes just outrageous. They also knew that he knew things as ‘So it Goes’ and his understanding of music and trends showed.

Fist of solidarity 

But the mavericks adored his spirit; when he and Richard were told in no uncertain terms to read a news story straight without comment – it just happened to be about Granada’s journalists going on strike in support of the nurses’ day of action in the 1980s – we knew there would be trouble.

Richard executed his mission with his normal professionalism. But then Tony’s clenched fist appeared on screen, just over Richard’s shoulder in a demonstration of solidarity with the workers.

On any other station he may have been fired. Everyone just shrugged; ‘It’s Tony’.

On the day of the strike he mounted the Quay Street steps and addressed the bemused health workers with quotations about Marx and ‘dialectic materialism’.

‘What the hell is he on?’ asked one nurse. It was a question often asked.

But then this was a man who loved the splendour and beauty of Italy only to proclaim; ‘It’s too nice for the Italians!’

When he set out to annoy every viewer in Merseyside by emphasising his love for Manchester and in particular Manchester United; the bosses frowned and opened an office in Liverpool and recruited more of us from Radio City to calm the nerves down the M62.  

Scouse revenge 

Some wags in my home city responded by stealing his beloved Jaguar and parking it in Liverpool. When it was safely returned to Quay Street, they went and pinched it again. Tony got the message but was undeterred after all ‘apart from New York, Manchester is the most exciting pace on earth’.

A few years after my first encounter with Tony, I was in the same newsroom when I happened upon a real insight into the amazing contradictions which made the visionary tick.

I saw his picture in the Rochdale Observer handing out prizes for a business competition at a school in the town.

The caption, which he must have faithfully delivered to a young reporter said it all; ‘Anthony Wilson, TV Presenter, Entrepreneur, Capitalist, Marxist, Atheist and Christian is pictured above’.

My memory may be faulty after all these years and with all those titles, but there are about twenty other contradictory descriptions which he could have added to the list; for this man was not only a visionary but a polymath.

So much so that after one edition of the business programme ‘Flying Start’ which he hosted brilliantly, Richard Branson warned him that he’d never make money because ‘you do too many different things, you need focus’.

It was good advice but Tony shrugged it off, after all the Rochdale Observer’s caption never said ‘wealthy’.

Anyway wealth may have interfered with his generosity and that generosity was always on display when he was showing new young recruits how to tell complicated stories on TV in just a few minutes.

He was also great company, even when he insisted on driving his jaguar all the way to Aintree race course with the passenger’s window wound down simply because it couldn’t be wound up.

As we drew close to the famous race course he took my advice and extinguished the strange looking cigarette in his mouth – minutes before he was greeted with cheery banter from Merseyside’s finest boys in blue.

24 hour party people

One of the sharpest interviewers around 

But his was no bit part. Journalistically Tony was one of the sharpest interviewers around. After six minutes jostling on live TV with Tony; Neil Kinnock, just about to be appointed the new Leader of the Labour Party, said to me ‘Your boy is good, very good’.

Kinnock had witnessed the agility of a brain which could quickly assimilate information and anticipate a politician’s answer. He also did it with a charm and delivery that few of us can match.

I asked Tony to host a big health debate, recorded in London ahead of the 1997 General Election and he did it with distinction; he was simply one of the best current affairs presenters in the country; on Flying Start; Up Front; Century 21; After Dark (C4) and of course his beloved ‘Granada Reports’ he was just one of the most watchable and interesting front men around, partly because he was so unpredictable.

He recently told me that he was ‘most proud’ of his new BBC Radio Manchester talk show ‘Talk of the Town’. He said that because of its free flowing and unpredictable style, it was among the best he has ever done.

Last year I asked him to help revive the iconic music show ‘The Tube’ for Channel Four Radio. Sadly he was too ill to make more than two shows but his fellow presenters including Alex James (Blur) and Konnie Huq were in awe of the legend.

During one show he presented it with jam all the way down his white shirt; as he dashed from the BBC’s ‘Politics Show’ to ‘The Tube’ studio in Salford he had an accident with a richly endowed doughnut. Tired he then slept during rehearsal but when the red light came on it didn’t matter – he was brilliant and always better without a script.

As he was introduced to the audience he said to me; ’they’ll boo me, they always do in Manchester’.

In fact they didn’t - they gave him a fabulous reception which surprised him, it was almost cooler to be jeered than cheered.

Champion of new talent 

And again – like John Peel – he was championing new talent. In the way he fell in love with punk he now loved screamoo and yes, if you’re over 30 it sounds as bad as its written. But after he persuaded us to put the band, Enter Shikari, on to the show, we were converts. Their style and energy were reminiscent of the Sex Pistols and we could see why Tony was an advocate.

About 15 years ago Tony said to me; ‘If it ended tomorrow, I’d say great, thanks, it’s been fun!’

As he was fighting cancer he told a friend; ‘I’ll be fine, I’ll either live or die, either way I’ll be fine’.

He meant it and maybe ‘life’ and ‘death’ are just contradictory titles to add to his list in The Rochdale Observer. If anyone can be both, it’ll be Tony – even if it’s just in spirit.

Genius, generous and great fun. What a privilege to know and work and learn from a visionary like that.  RIP.    

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Comments (1)

1  By Giles D. Bastow , on 19-08-2007 02:29 Sir Clough William Ellis built Port Meirion on a whim, he wasn't concerned with what the critics might say and all the bullshit that goes with it. Like Clough, Tony Wilson that had great ideas and never gave in.....people like that are very hard to find in this world.  God bless. Report