Clive Myrie has reported for the BBC from all over the world. He was its correspondent in Japan, Singapore, Johannesburg and Washington, has covered eight US presidential elections, and been to Afghanistan and Iraq. His broadcasts from a rooftop in Kyiv made him the face of the corporation’s coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and in recent weeks, he has been reporting on yet another war, in Tel Aviv presenting coverage of the US-Israeli attack on Iran.
Asked what stands out for him above all, he chooses the election of Barack Obama as US president in 2008. “I was there, and that was a powerful moment.”
Myrie was at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia; a historically black university and a “very hallowed place … it’s where Martin Luther King developed his ideas of non-violent protest [and] a couple of the professors there were very instrumental in the civil rights movement”.
At about 2am, the news came through: Obama had won the election, and the BBC’s election special programme wanted to interview Myrie live.
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He described the scene, how “everyone was in tears, that this was an incredible moment, that Obama was essentially standing on the shoulders of a lot of the people around me, because they were civil rights marchers, they were in Montgomery, they were in Selma, they were in Alabama, they were attacked with billy clubs and dogs. His success is their success.
“I said all that, and for some reason, towards the end of my monologue, I say … for me being a black man, to be in this place at this moment in time in the South with a president-elect who is black is a real privilege.
“I put down the microphone … and I thought, I’ve just crossed a line there. One of the most important moments in modern American political history, I’ve made it all about myself. And I felt a bit of an idiot – I thought, oh God, oh no, I’ve messed this up.”
Then he saw beside him a correspondent for one of the big US networks. “He had tears streaming down his face while he was broadcasting live, and I realised I hadn’t crossed any bloody line at all, not at all.
I put down the microphone … and I thought, I’ve just crossed a line there
— Clive Myrie
“The reviews of the BBC coverage pointed to the moment when I behaved as a journalist, but I also behaved as a human being, and those are the most powerful ways of relating stories.
“That reaffirmed my belief in how to tell stories … the best journalists, the best storytellers, are the ones who behave like human beings.”
[ From the archive: 'Change has come', says victorious ObamaOpens in new window ]
Myrie always wanted to be a journalist. Growing up in Bolton, Lancashire, the son of immigrant parents from Jamaica, he had a paper round and was “fascinated by the stories on the pages of the newspapers I was delivering”.
He loved watching Alan Whicker: “He travelled the world, seemed to be having fun telling all these really interesting stories about different peoples and what they ate and what they wore and stuff, and I just found all that very fascinating, and realised that apparently he was a journalist.
“But he didn’t look like me and he didn’t sound like me. He sounded very, very posh.
“So, I wasn’t sure if it would be possible for someone like me [to become a journalist].”
Then he saw “a guy on television called Trevor McDonald” – ITN’s first black reporter who became the presenter of ITV’s News at Ten – and realised journalism “is something I could possibly do because Trevor McDonald was doing it.”
At university he studied law. “My parents are immigrants from another country, from Jamaica to Britain, and you don’t travel 6,000 miles and leave everything you know for your children … to end up doing a job that is perhaps not what you hoped for, not what you expected, which is why most immigrant parents would want a doctor or a lawyer or something like that.
“Someone with a proper job, as it were. Journalism, telling stories – it seems a little bit nebulous, not quite concrete, not quite secure, which is what you want if you’re an immigrant parent, for your child.”
Myrie was accepted into the Middle Temple in London to become a barrister at the same time as he was offered a place on a BBC graduate training programme.
“It was time to choose, and I decided to choose the BBC, and that’s who I’m with now.”
In his current role as a news presenter with the BBC, he is again following in the footsteps of his hero McDonald, as one of the anchors of the corporation’s flagship 10pm news.
“I’ve never seen myself as a black journalist, and I don’t think Trevor has either. I just happen to be a journalist who happens to be black.
“I’m not setting out to be a role model for young black kids today, but if they see me doing my job, and that gives them inspiration, and that gives them hope that they can do it and it fires their imagination and makes them want to get into this business, then that’s a wonderful, wonderful thing.”
Other roles for Myrie include hosting the television quiz Mastermind, which since 2019 has been made in Belfast for the BBC by Hat Trick Productions.
“I started presenting Mastermind five years ago, and I’ve asked something like six, 7,000 questions,” he says. In that time “we’ve had the youngest winner, we’ve had one of the oldest winners. We’ve had love, which is pretty cool.
“It was great Mastermind ended up being made in Belfast after being made in England for 40-odd years, and it’s a great team involved with the show, and I have a lot of fun going over three times a year to film it.”
Myrie’s previous experience of Belfast was as a reporter during the Troubles; in the late 1980s and early 1990s he would be dispatched to cover “the latest development”, staying as one of the pack of journalists put up in the Europa Hotel.
“It was a classic example of the retreat of a colonial power from a certain part of the world, and I saw it in those terms … particularly in relation to other conflicts around the world that were happening around the same time.
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“A complicated, fascinating situation akin, on lots of levels, to the situation in the Middle East and parts of eastern Europe and so on.”
Now, he finds it “wonderful being in Belfast during a time of peace. There was always that niggling little sense in the back of my mind that I’d be taken for a squaddie, being black during the Troubles. I obviously don’t have to worry about that now.
“There’s a perpetual sense of hope, I think now … there are still issues, clearly. Everything isn’t rosy. It’s one of the poorer parts of the United Kingdom and it’s been neglected, frankly, by the powers of Westminster for too long.
“But there’s a sense of optimism, a lot of investment. It’s a really funky place to be now.”
He has also spent time south of the Border with his wife, Mary Catherine Barry, whose father’s family was from Borrisoleigh, Co Tipperary. “I love all things Irish,” he says. There is family in Portlaoise, and connections to Kenmare, Co Kerry. “We go there for weddings and stuff every now and again.”
He has enjoyed seeing Dublin develop into a “vibrant, modern city … with a strong international presence” which he says is “indicative of how big international cities like Dublin should be.
“Being ethnically diverse is a sign of healthiness. It’s a sign of something that is doing well,” he says.
There’s always been a deep connection between the Caribbean and Ireland
— Clive Myrie
Myrie himself has discovered he is “6 per cent Irish. That would be, I’m sure, some overseer getting in the hen house in the Caribbean during slavery times.”
He reflects that this demonstrates the interconnectedness “of all our histories … the international slave trade was international; that was the point about it – it crossed the high seas, it connected people and, as a result, some of us are the living embodiment of all of that.
“There’s always been a deep connection between the Caribbean and Ireland – the argument is that Ireland was the first colony, Jamaica the second” and though he emphasises he is “not qualified to know” about the extent to which Ireland has reflected on its people’s role in the slave trade, he does believe there is “an understanding” that some of the “shock troops of empire” were Irish.
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“Your average overseer on a British plantation, on a sugar plantation in Jamaica, would either have been Welsh, west country or Irish.”
He has been exploring his own heritage in his most recent series, Clive Myrie’s African Adventures, made by Derry-based production company Alleycats.
“It was very, very emotional,” he says. “My family are from Westmoreland, which is the most southwesterly parish in Jamaica. Beyond that, I’ve no idea, but I do know they would have come at some point on a slave ship from Africa.”
The DNA test traced his origins to what are now Ghana and Nigeria; in the series, he visits “one of the places where my ancestors could well have been held before they were bundled on to slave ships … it was a difficult, difficult moment.”
I’m saying to a viewer in Belfast, you’re seeing this kid, or this person whose family has been destroyed in Gaza or Ukraine, you should empathise, because you’re a human being just like them
— Clive Myrie
But he also took part in “a sort of naming ceremony, and I was given the kind of name I could well have had if my ancestral line had stayed within Ghana and hadn’t been broken and part of it sent off to the Caribbean.
“That sort of initiation, that baptism, modern-day baptism, was very powerful and very moving … there was a sense that I was returning back to Africa after four or 500 years.”
Myrie describes himself as “incredibly proud to be an Englishman. Absolutely 100 per cent I am massively proud to be British … I am immensely proud and honoured to be from the Caribbean, and it’s wonderful that I have African roots.”
But, he says, “my starting point is always that we’re all human beings … that should be the starting point for everyone.
“When it comes to migration, the people who are anti-migration … they’re the same people who would have been against my parents moving to the UK from Jamaica.”
But, he says, “the world didn’t spin off its axis … they’ve added vibrancy and excitement and a new dimension, they’ve created communities that are now well established and that are wonderful.
“We should be celebrating diversity and celebrating difference,” he says, “and I think that starting point of empathy and a shared humanity is the most important thing, and that’s what storytelling is about.
“I’m saying to a viewer in Belfast, you’re seeing this kid, or this person whose family has been destroyed in Gaza or Ukraine, you should empathise, because you’re a human being just like them.
“That’s all I’m doing every night, trying to get across the news to people.”
