It seems like Jimmy McGovern’s award-winning show The Street is finished, following an interview with the Liverpool writer in which he said he was not interested in producing the series anywhere but the axed Granada Studios.

ITV has closed ITV Productions studios at Manchester, where The Street is made as part of the latest round of cuts. ITV has been badly hit by falling ad revenues and some fairly hopeless decision-making over recent years, with Michael Grade now on the way out too.

This is a shame, for obvious reasons, not least the fact The Street is one of the few remaining adult dramas on the BBC, much of the rest given over to rather silly programmes like Robin Hood and Survivors or soaps like Holby City.

The last edition of Black+White was to have featured an interview with Jimmy as its centrepiece, but our own round of cuts and poor decisions meant we didn’t have the cash, so it now lives on the web, though I also managed to get it in Tribune.

I’ve never printed an interview as a Q&A before or since, but the answers Jimmy gave were so interesting, frank and personable I didn’t feel I had anything to add.

I found him to be a lovely man, though we never met, and quite gentle, warm and humourous. He seemed quite irked by the fact that everyone expected him to be nutter, which I found amusing.

As Christopher Eccleston – a mate of Jimmy’s – had recently taken the lead role in Doctor Who, I rather mischievously asked him if he’d consider writing an episode – “Do me a favour!” – and he also gave me some great gossip about Doctor Who.

Anyway, the Jimmy McGovern interview is here, along with a fair bit on the genesis of The Street.