Lisa's life

Lisa Nandy has broadcasting heritage. Her mother, Luise Fitzwalter, was at the heart of Granada at the time of its biggest internal rows - and left with enough money to donate to Lisa's party leadership bid in 2020. 

Luise was the daughter of Liberal peer Frank Byers, and went to Sherborne and York University. She married Dipak Nandy (his second marriage) in Leicester. Dipak was Kolkata-born, a Marxist academic and politician, and first director of the Runnymede Trust. Luise moved with him to Manchester when he joined the management of the Equal Opportunities Commission. 

Once Lisa and her sister Francesca were born, Luise wrote to Granada looking for work. She started in 1983 children's programmes, and moved through What The Papers Say, which put her on the same floor as World In Action, edited by Ray Fitzwalter.  From 1986 she worked as a single mum, divorcing Dipak in 1986.  Luise then moved to edit the regional news magazine, Granada Reports.  The management ructions which preceded the decline of Granada from 1993 also saw Luise and Ray fired; they married in 1994. 

Luise is still based in the northwest and had a spell on Bury Council.

Other cultural elements of Lisa's development: she camped outside the Oldham home of diminutive Take That singer Mark Owen, sustained by her mother bringing tea. She has described 'Toxic', by Britney Spears, as the ‘most perfect piece of pop music ever written’. 

She studied first at Newcastle University, in the days of clubs like Ikon, Baja Beach Club and Legends. She joined the student newspaper, The Courier:  " I did all sorts. I started as a News reporter, and then I did a letters page for a while, with a sort of column. I used to hide from our editor, because I had never written what I was supposed to have written by the deadline, and often our editor would have to write it himself, and it all went wrong in third year when he moved in with us. He’d be ringing my phone and shouting, “I can hear your phone ringing, Lisa – I know you’re in the house!” and I’d be hiding in a cupboard somewhere. I wrote Features as well – in all honesty, the quality was not high, but what I did learn was confidence, and how cut-throat student journalism can be. "