Harry Gration: My 40 years in broadcasting

News presenter Harry Gration has to be one of the most down to earth people you could ever hope to meet. Although we have met previously, when I catch up with him on the phone to talk about his 40 years in broadcasting, he is walking into Leeds and in between questions, he keeps having to stop to say hello to people.

“It’s something I’ve got used to,” says the 67-year-old. “I get recognised all the time but sometimes it’s by people who don’t know why they know me. I think it’s one of the great things about regional TV, in that we have access to people, whereas the network superstars do not. We meet them at charity events or just walking into town like this, we talk to them all the time. I hope it’s never gone to my head, I’ve always been very grateful for the job I have. I love doing it and I will hopefully do it for a little while longer.”

His career as a broadcaster can be traced right back to his youth, when, as a cricket-mad youngster, he would invent matches in his back garden and then commentate on them.

Born in Bradford to parents Morris, a chemist, and Nina, he attended half a dozen schools before he age of 11, moving whenever his father got new work.

“My dad was manager of the Boots store in Darley Lane, Bradford but then he was moved to the all night store, as it was then, on Boar Lane, in 1959 and later to York. We moved house a lot, I think I went to five or six schools before I was 11.”

The former Leeds Grammar School pupil trained as a teacher and was head of history at Rodillion School, which is also where his broadcasting career began.