Wayne's World: Gordon Burns on how he got started in television

Gordon was the presenter of The Krypton Factor for eighteen years and was the face of North West Tonight for fourteen years. He has lived here in Trafford, near Altrincham, with his wife for around thirty six years.

He is a man I greatly admire so it is my absolute pleasure to welcome him as my guest here in Wayne’s World.

I had the pleasure of meeting Gordon at a Peter Kay Comic Relief event many years ago and found him to be the top professional and complete gentleman that we know and love from our televisions.

I asked Gordon how he got started in the industry and here is what he had to say:

I come from Northern Ireland and attended a fairly posh school in Belfast called Campbell College.

It was a fiercely rugby playing school but I was a football fanatic dreaming about pulling on the green shirt of Northern Ireland and playing alongside my boyhood heroes Jimmy McIlroy and Danny Blanchflower. 

So, as the school frowned on football, I formed a sort of rebel football team and then launched a little football magazine covering all aspects of the team and even my own editor’s column!

After I had hand-written each edition my father took it up to Stormont where the N.Ireland Government sits, and gave it to his secretary. My father was the editor of Hansard there. She typed it up on stencils, ran lots of copies off and I spent the evenings stapling the pages together.

I sold it for 3 pence (about 20p) and the money went on buying my team’s kit plus travel expenses to matches.  One day the headmaster summoned me to his study and confronted me with my magazine. I thought I was in for some praise for my entrepreneurial spirit.

But he berated me for it, banned it from ever coming into the school again and dropped the copy he’d been brandishing into the waste paper bin totally devastating me. 

But I’m a fighter so when my next edition was ready I boldly sold it two feet outside the school gates where it was snapped up like hot cakes because it was now a banned magazine!

The Belfast Telegraph heard about it and invited me to their offices to be interviewed for a story about it. I went there after school and as soon as I entered the newsroom, I decided then and there that this was for me.

Two years later, the Editor of the Belfast Telegraph finally employed me as a reporter just after I finished my A Levels at school in 1960. I retired from the media in September 2011, 51 years later!

You were the face of North West Tonight from 1997 to 2011. You interviewed so many interesting people but do you have any stand out interviews?

The week before I retired in September 2011 my editor suggested that as a special send off I should interview anyone of my choice. The first person I approached was someone I had never ever interviewed but always wanted to, Sir Alex Ferguson manager of Manchester Utd. 

Sir Alex had a 15 year ban on the BBC and despite all the requests put in by a vast array of top program's and big interviewers he rejected them all but unbelievably decided to do mine!

I went to meet him at the Carrington training complex and he gave me a wonderful interview which included a controversial section in the middle in which he bemoaned the power and control TV companies had over football even dictating things like kick off times, because they paid so much for the transmission rights.

Then came the ever eye catching and memorable line “but if you sleep with the devil you pay the price!” 

That night every national news bulletin including ITV and Sky carried a chunk of the interview which is extremely rare and the sports pages of the national newspapers led with it next morning.

Add to that the fact that those immortal words of Sir Alex about sleeping with the devil are now displayed in the National Football Museum. 

From 1977 to 1995 you were the host of the iconic game show The Krypton Factor, is it true that you didn’t want to host this show at first? Any stories about working on the show?

Yes, that is true. I was presenting Granada TV’s political programmes at the time and producing some of them too. Another producer and a very good pal of mine had just devised the format for a new quiz show he’d decided to call The Krypton Factor.

Krypton is the planet from where Superman came and the quiz set out to find the superman or woman of the UK by testing them in a whole range of brain stretching subjects plus physical ability in which they had to tackle the iconic Krypton Factor army assault course. 

I was not in the running for it nor was remotely interested in it. They chose a famous Granada presenter in those days called Mike Scott whom older readers may remember but Mike pulled out of the show very close to when the first series was to be recorded.

The producer desperately tried to find a replacement I suggested several names to him. In the end with still no one on board to present it, he turned to me and said “I’ve decided who’s doing it – you!”

I laughed and said that I was a serious political journalist with no interest in doing a quiz show. But he talked me round and he assured it me it would only be for a year so I wouldn’t lose my political credibility!

And the rest is history. The show ran for eighteen years, attracted audiences in excess of 18 million and went on to receive the highly prestigious Premios Ondas award for best entertainment programme in Europe.

As much as we'd like to do so, we can’t escape Covid-19. What are you doing to keep yourself and your family safe and what advice would you give to our community about our new way of living?

The pandemic is now so severe here that, at the age of 78, the only thing my wife and I can sensibly do is to stay at home except for well isolated walks and wait to be vaccinated.

It is a hugely depressing time not being able to fly to America to see my daughter and grandchildren and only seeing the rest of my family locally at a distance.

But importantly there is huge hope now. The vaccine should in time get us back to some sort of decent life where we can all mix, travel again and yes, nip down to the pub with mates.

But I beg everyone…if you have any sympathy and feelings at all for our doctors and nurses on the front line virtually on their knees battling away on 12 hour hospital shifts to treat patients and save as many lives as possible please, please stay at home if you can, but keep your distance when outside and do wear a mask.

We are in desperately serious times. Our hospitals face collapse. It’s absolutely vital now that we ALL follow the rules to the letter. Please!