Early life.
Wilson was born 20 February 1950 in Hope Hospital, Salford, Lancashire, England.[3] He attended De La Salle Christian Brothers' School.[4] Seeing a production of Hamlet extinguished Wilson's original ambition to be a nuclear physicist.[citation needed] He graduated with a third in English from Jesus College, Cambridge
Broadcasting career
Unlike many of his university contemporaries, Wilson returned home after graduation and began his career in regional television as a news reporter in the 1970s for Granada Television based in Manchester. He went on to present Granada's culture, music and events programme So It Goes. Through the 1980s and 1990s he was one of the main anchors on Granada Reports, the regional evening news programme, where he worked with Richard and Judy among other figures. He continued in this line of work even at the height of Factory's success.
In the 1980s Wilson hosted The Other Side of Midnight, another Granada weekly regional culture slot, covering music, literature, and the arts in general. Its Sunday night slot made it one of the UK's first experiments in late night weekend TV. He reported for ITV's celebrated current affairs series World In Action in the early 1980s and also hosted Channel 4's After Dark, the UK's first open-ended late night chat show, in which he chaired a loose discussion in a darkened studio between intellectuals and celebrities of various descriptions in various stages of inebriation. He hosted the short-lived TV Quiz shows Topranko! and MTV Europe's "Remote Control" in the 1990s and Manchester United themed quiz, Masterfan for MUTV.
In 2006 he became regional political presenter for the BBC's Politics Show. He presented a weekly radio show on Xfm Manchester (Sunday Roast), and a show on BBC Radio Manchester.
Music career
Wilson's involvement in popular music stemmed from hosting Granada's culture and music program So It Goes. Wilson saw the Sex Pistols at the Manchester Lesser Free Trade Hall, in June 1976, an experience which he described as "nothing short of an epiphany" [5]. He booked them for the second series, probably the first television showing of the then-revolutionary British strand of punk rock.
He later founded the record label Factory Records and the Haçienda nightclub in Manchester.
He was the manager of many bands, including A Certain Ratio and The Durutti Column, and was part owner and manager of Factory Records, home of the Happy Mondays and Joy Division (later New Order) - the band managed by friend and business partner Rob Gretton. He also founded and managed The Haçienda (FAC51) nightclub and Dry (FAC201) bar, together forming a central part of the music and cultural scene of Manchester. The scene was termed "Madchester".
He never made a fortune from Factory Records or the Haçienda, despite the enormous popularity and cultural significance of both endeavours. Both came to an abrupt although not necessarily premature end in the late 1990s.
A semi-fictionalized version of his life and of the surrounding era was made into the 2002 film, 24 Hour Party People, which stars the comedian Steve Coogan as Wilson. After the movie was produced, Wilson wrote a novelization based on the screenplay, despite being described on the movie poster as a "twat". He played a minor role in the 2005 film A Cock and Bull Story, in which his character interviews Steve Coogan (playing himself).
Wilson was a partner in the yearly In The City music festival and industry conference, and also F4 Records, the fourth imprint of Factory Records, set up to be an online distributor for Wilson's long term protégé Vini Reilly, of The Durutti Column. F4 also released music by Manchester based bands RaW-T and The Young Offenders Institute.
Politics
Wilson was an outspoken supporter of regionalism. In 2003 he started a campaign for the North West to be allowed a referendum on the creation of a regional assembly, called the Necessary Group after a line in the US Declaration of Independence. Although his campaign was successful, with the Government announcing that a vote would take place, this was later abandoned when the North East of England voted against the introduction of a regional tier of Government. Wilson later spoke at several political events on this subject.
Death
In 2006 Wilson was diagnosed with renal cancer and in early 2007 an emergency surgery was performed to remove one of his kidneys. [6] This forced the postponement of plans to create a southern hemisphere version of In the City.[7] Despite the surgery the cancer progressed, and a course of chemotherapy was not effective. Wilson died of a heart attack in Manchester's Christie Hospital on 10 August 2007 aged 57, [8] due to complications arising from kidney cancer. [9]
Illness
Wilson's doctors recommended he take the drug Sunitinib (aka Sutent), the £3,500/month cost of which was not funded by the Manchester Primary Care Trust. He was turned down by the NHS, while patients being treated alongside him at the Christie Hospital and living just a few miles away in Cheshire are receiving funding for the therapy.
A number of Wilson's music industry friends, including the Happy Mondays former manager Nathan McGough and their current manager, Elliot Rashman, formed a fund to help pay for Wilson's medical treatment. [10]
Wilson said: "This [Sutent] is my only real option. It is not a cure but can hold the cancer back, so I will probably be on it until I die . When they said I would have to pay £3,500 for the drugs each month, I thought where am I going to find the money? I'm the one person in this industry who famously has never made any money . I used to say some people make money and some make history - which is very funny until you find you can't afford to keep yourself alive . I've never paid for private healthcare because I'm a socialist. Now I find you can get tummy tucks and cosmetic surgery on the NHS but not the drugs I need to stay alive. It is a scandal
Joy Division
