Norma Percy the MP John Mackintosh, who recommended her to the Granada Television producer Brian Lapping when he was looking for a researcher for a documentary on the workings of Parliament called "The State of the Nation". Percy produced the Granada series "End of Empire" (1985), which explored the effects of the end of the British Empire in various former colonies, and worked with Lapping on the 1987 drama-documentary "Breakthrough at Reykjavik", a reconstruction of the Reykjavík Summit between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1986. After fifteen years at Granada, Percy joined the newly formed production company Brian Lapping Associates in
Mikhail Gorbachev for five years. In July 2016, Gorbachev criticized the North Atlantic Treaty Organization amid escalating tensions between the military alliance and the Russian Federation. Gorbachev has accused NATO of preparing for a "hot" war against Russia, saying that "All the rhetoric in Warsaw just yells of a desire almost to declare war on Russia. They only talk about defence, but actually they are preparing for offensive operations." In June 2018, Gorbachev welcomed the 2018 Russia–United States summit between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump in Helsinki, Finland. In October 2018, Gorbachev criticized President Donald Trump's threat to withdraw from the 1987