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He saw the modern world as a constant battle between those with a lust to control and exploit and those resisting them, the freedom fighters, depicted by him in various romantic guises, such as the “wild boys” in the book of that title, or fish-boys from another planet, or the young pirates of Cities of the Red Night (1981).His erotic and obscene material has an obsessive character and has repelled many readers and critics. When Dead Fingers Talk, an amalgam of The Naked Lunch, The Soft Machine (1961) and The Ticket that Exploded (1962), was first published in 1963, it received such a long hostile review in the Times Literary Supplement that a 14-week correspondence followed, with hundreds of letters agreeing or disagreeing with the review. Burroughs used the experience of his drug addiction, from which he was cured in 1958 before starting to write, to create a world of his own, the sub-culture of the junkie, which became his metaphor for modern life (though Junkie: Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict was published under the pseudonym of William Lee in 1953). During the last two decades Ginsberg has emerged as their major poet and Burroughs the major fiction writer. Burroughs was always more remote and private than the others and only Ginsberg, who helped edit The Naked Lunch (1959), and Gysin, whom Burroughs met much later in Tangier, can be said to have in any way influenced him, but not much in his subject matter, which came largely from the gangster films of his adolescence and other American writers.As with James Joyce, one of his literary heroes, there is sharp critical division as to Burroughs’s merits as a writer, even for the majority of his work which is not experimental in a mechanical sense. He cited a plane crash that he had exactly described in a text written at the time it happened.In the late 1940s, Burroughs joined up with the poets who later became known as “Beat” – Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Harold Norse and Neal Cassidy – and they assumed a lifestyle largely based on sex, drugs, alcohol and fast-food, while criticising the American ethic of acquisition and work. Mr Butterfield will take David Liddiment’s role as managing director of Granada UK broadcasting.

He will take responsibility for Laser, the television sales house, and Granada’s ITV licences. A role was being created for Mr Liddiment within Granada’s media division. Mr Liddiment is thought to be a front-runner for the post of ITV’s director of programmes.. It may be some time before the literary reputation of William Burroughs finds its proper place in the 20th-century pantheon of creative writers. Mr Plantin would be well-placed to take on senior creative responsibilities at Granada as, during his time at ITV, he introduced dramas such as Prime Suspect, Heartbeat and Cracker.

He also pioneered extra weekly episodes of Coronation Street and Emmerdale in a drive to increase ITV’s audiences at the expense of the BBC.A reorganisation of Granada’s broadcasting portfolio would be timely as the group has recently expanded its television holdings through its pounds 700m bid for Yorkshire-Tyne Tees Television at the end of June. This would then be consciously edited until the author was satisfied with the result.
Like Marcel Duchamp and John Cage, Burroughs experimented with what chance brought together and genuinely believed that in this way he could make things happen in life through magic. From Gysin, Burroughs developed the concept of fold-in and cut-up writing, whereby the random putting-together of lines by the author with lines from selected texts by others and chance newspaper cuttings would bring a totally new text into existence. As a writer Burroughs was above all an artist endowed with prophetic powers, much influenced by the visual arts, especially through his association with Brion Gysin, a one-time member of the original surrealist group of painters, who died in 1986. Once the takeover is completed, the group will control four ITV franchise areas: Granada, Yorkshire, Tyne Tees and LWT. It has also increased its commitment to UK television by taking a 50 per cent stake in British Digital Broadcasting, the group, owned jointly with Carlton Communications, which won three licences to broadcast digital terrestrial television almost two months ago.In addition, Granada has stakes in BSkyB, GMTV and ITN, and operates a number of satellite channels in a joint venture with Sky. The company also supplies around 40 per cent of ITV’s original programming.The recent appointment of Stewart Butterfield, formerly director of advertising and sales at Channel 4, suggested that changes were afoot.