I had long been a fan of Denis Forman's Good Opera Guide, which manages to both venerate and debunk the art form, so when a new edition was published last year I was eager to interview its writer. In truth, Forman probably shouldn't have done the interview. He had been in St Mary's hospital in Paddington, London, for seven weeks and was hating it. Having always prized freedom and industry, he did not appreciate enforced idleness. "I can no longer read or be creative," he said, "and 24 hours is a lot to get through."
Yet even from his hospital bed, with his false leg parked beside him, you felt his energy as he recalled the great days of Granada – Sidney Bernstein had been a second father to him – and inveighed against the feebleness of much of our current ratings-driven TV. He called Downton Abbey a "pathetic little thing", set beside, say, The Jewel in the Crown, which was indeed his jewel in the crown.
He had had a significant hand in the evolution of World in Action, Brideshead Revisited and Coronation Street, though he admitted that originally he had doubted whether those broad Lancashire accents would ever be accepted down south. He also stressed Granada's role in bringing politics closer to the public: making interviews with politicians less deferential; covering byelections; pioneering broadcasts from the Trades Union Congress. "How many people we've bored since then as a result I don't know," he said.
Forman was one of the last of that wartime generation which saw no contradiction between "pop" and "posh", Coronation Street and Covent Garden. All that mattered was whether it was any good. "We had a determination to democratise television," he said, "so that the viewer could share the political processes; a determination to make television funny, interesting and relevant, World in Action being the best example; and a determination to create great television drama; and we succeeded a bit in all of them."