Greg Dyke joined the University in 1971 at 24 years old, not knowing that just over thirty years later he’d return as Chancellor. Before becoming a student of Social Sciences at York, Greg worked as a regional journalist at the Evening Mail in Slough.
Greg: “I’d been an evening paper journalist for five years when I decided I ought to go to university. I didn’t have all the qualifications that you would need, but York welcomed applications from students from different backgrounds. So I applied, and I got in.”
Grace: “And what was it like joining the university at 24?”
Greg: “It was quite a difficult process: suddenly trying to understand academic work, which I’d never really done much of at school. I always remember going to my first Sociology lecture, it was on Weber’s theory of bureaucracy, and I remember thinking I have no idea what this was about.
I reckon it took me a year to stop being a journalist and start being a student”. Obviously as I’d been a journalist I went along to Nouse and wrote some stuff for them; I used to write this weekly column called ‘Gryke’.”
Reflecting on his time as a student journalist in York, Greg mentioned a conversation he’d had a few years ago with a friend at The Telegraph.
Greg: “The Telegraph had just done a piece on where they thought the best student journalists came from, and they decided York was the best. And that was interesting because York has no journalism course, it was just the experience of working on those newspapers, radio and TV stations at York.”
In his second year at York, Greg joined the Student’s Union as ‘External Vice President’. He remembered playing in a bizarre football match against Lancaster’s Student’s Union at Roses.
Greg: “Just as I was becoming Director at the BBC, they found someone who had played with me who said I was the David Beckham of his day, and that’s the best thing that anyone’s ever said to me about York!”
As well as being involved with Nouse, Greg also played his fair share of both university and college football.
Greg: “I played in the fourth team for a season, then I played college football for Derwent. Those were the days when everyone wanted to play York’s teams at the university, because when you went to away games around York the pitches were terrible, but here you had proper pitches and changing rooms.”
Greg graduated in 1974 after completing his exams in his own room. He persuaded the politics department that he was accustomed to typing after years as a journalist and they should let him type his exams in his own room. After graduation, Greg returned to regional journalism and worked at the Newcastle Journal.
Greg: “I went back to doing journalism and I thought it was trivial, so I left it after six months. And I got a job at Wandsworth Council for Community Relations and I was their Campaigns Officer, and I did that for three years.
Later I got offered a job at London Weekend Television which was one some of the most stimulating times of my life. It was the opposite of daily television journalism. I worked on something called the London Programme, and you were given six weeks to do a project.”
On the transition from print journalism to broadcast, Greg described the process of working on the programme similar to “ doing a very well-researched essay.”
Greg: “You had to work out the thesis and what you were saying first, then shoot it afterwards. Whereas so much of television at that time was about squirting the camera at something, and then trying to figure out what you were saying later; we did it the other way around. It was exciting!”
Whilst at London Weekend Television he also worked on the ground breaking political programme Weekend World and started The Six O’Clock Show, which he described as “entertainment using journalistic techniques.”
Greg: “It was about the funny of living in London. I came to the conclusion that if you watched the output of London Weekly Television, you wouldn’t know that anyone really enjoyed living in London. So we did this show where we showed the funny side of London, looking at a different side of life.”
One story Greg remembers was “a bloke living in Wimbledon who’d spent five years building a model of the Titanic out of matchsticks, and when he launched it on Wimbledon Pond it sank on its maiden voyage.”
Greg: “We sent a crew over, and sent someone to find the Titanic but unfortunately he trod on it so when he pulled it out, he pulled it up in two bits!"
Greg: “When you become the editor of a show, you’re having ideas for other people. Good television journalism is all about good ideas, everything else follows. If it’s a crap idea, it’s a crap show. And what I discovered when I went into television was that there were lots of people who were really bright and came from really brilliant backgrounds, but they didn’t have any ideas.
I left there to be Editor-in-Chief of Breakfast Television and that was, without a doubt, the funniest year of my life. I’ve never laughed so much, because it was in such a bad state – it was financially bankrupt!”
Greg worked for other ITV companies before returning to London Weekend Television as Director of Programmes.
Around this time, Greg also became a director at Manchester United, his favourite football team since childhood.
Grace: “I saw that in a speech for the Manchester Evening News you said that when you joined the BBC you had to leave your role at Manchester United and that your children never forgave you for that!”
Greg: “Absolutely! I mean, losing four tickets in the Director’s Box at Manchester United! But before all that, whilst Chief Executive at London Weekend Television, I was also Chairman of Sport for ITV. I played a big part in the establishment of the Premier League, which I’m not sure was a good idea now, but nevermind! So I got to know most of the people who ran the football clubs in this country. And I remember at one of the meetings with all the big clubs, the guy at Manchester United said to me ‘which team do you support’ and I said ‘Manchester United’, and he beamed. And some years later they came back and said they wanted someone on the board who knew something about television, and would I join.”
Greg: “I've supported Manchester United since I was a kid… So I got on the board of Manchester United, I was on the board the year that Manchester United won the treble; I was in the dressing room in Barcelona when they won the Champions League.
And then I got offered the job at the BBC and I had to leave, so I left but as I said, my kids had come up many weekends to watch the games at Manchester. And my son, who was then about 11, used to sit around in the Director’s Box thinking he owned the place.”
Whilst Director General at the BBC, Greg started BBC3 and BBC4, started the children’s channels (we can thank Greg for CBeebies!), and started a new service out of Hull.
Greg: “One of the things we did, largely because I’d been to York, was expand broadcasting in Hull.
"Support for the BBC declines the further north you go”, so in an attempt to increase BBC support in the north Greg planned the move of “great chunks of the BBC to Manchester.”
“It seemed to me that we needed more people who came from the North. And if you watch breakfast television now, it’s based in the North - in Manchester.”
Returning to football after leaving the BBC, Greg explained that: “I was asked by the supporters of Brentford if would I become the Chairman of Brentford, which I then did for seven or eight years until I left to become Chair of the FA. And I still go every week to the home games, but I’m only just there as a fan now. “I’ve always loved football, I came from a football family…my dad was always much more interested in ‘did you win at football?’ rather than ‘how did you do at school?’”
Grace: “What position did you play?”
Greg: “Fullback or midfield; I was a bit of a clogger. But as you get older, you can’t be a clogger because your knees go… so now I’m just a fan,” “I played my last game of six-a side-football a week after my 70th birthday, because I decided I’d play until I was 70.”
In 2004 Greg became the Chancellor of York.
As Chancellor, Greg attended graduation ceremonies, handing out the diplomas: “Every year I used to say to the parents at the graduation ceremony, there are three feelings you’ve got today: relief that they’ve actually finished the degree, second is pride, and the third is trepidation - are they going to come back and live with you.”
Grace: “And I think increasingly the answer has become ‘Yes’. What was the biggest change in York for you, returning over 30 years later as Chancellor?”
Greg: “The number of students. I was Chancellor there for 11 years, and during that time they built the second campus. The city changed a lot too. In 1971 it was still an industrial city, but by 2000 that had changed. I’d hate to think what would have happened to a city like York without a university, or even two universities, York is a vibrant city!”
Despite no longer being Chancellor, Greg is still involved in York: “It’s sort of like my second home really. I’ve never lived there again, but I’ve spent a lot of time there.”
“I was Chairman of ‘Make It York’, the tourist agency for some years. And I’m still involved in York in terms of this enormous development that’s going to happen on the other side of the railway station, and I’m Chairman of the Advisory Board on that.”
Though Greg left his role as Chancellor in 2015, he has still found ways to continue to make his mark.
Greg: “There’s two bits of York that have got my name on. There’s a hockey pitch around the back of the sports centre which is named after my dad, it's called the JLD.”
Grace: “That’s where we train every week for football!”
Greg: “Is it? Well I gave them the money to build that, just after my dad had died. And do you know the place by Central Hall called ‘Greg’s Place’, yeah well that’s me. I gave them the money to do that, and to do up the whole of that area. And is the screen still there? The only condition I gave on it was they had to put up an outside screen so you could sit outside and watch football and films if the weather was right.”
Grace: “Well funnily enough, at the end of my first year I went to a screening of Mamma Mia, not football, on that screen.”
Greg: “And were there many people there?”
Grace: “Yes, there were loads of people there.”
As our conversation neared to an end, Greg shared some words on journalism: “It’s still a great career. One generation will tell you it’s not how it used to be. Well, they’ll always do that, they’ve always done that. But actually it’s a really interesting time to go into journalism.”
And on university, Greg finished by saying: “The thing about university is friendship, you make mates that are your mates for life, really. I mean I’ve still got three or four, and we meet up every so often. You just meet people and you click.”
Want to get involved? Whether you are a current UoY student and want to write for AlumNOUSE, or you’re a York alum and want to share your story, please contact me via my email: grace.bannister@nouse.co.uk.