BBC's Clive Myrie says he didn't watch corporation's news growing up

Clive Myrie reveals he didn’t watch the BBC growing up because his family thought it was ‘too posh, too poncey’ and ‘didn’t have any black people on it’

Now one of the corporation’s most respected figures, you’d have thought he was always destined to become a BBC newsreader.

But Clive Myrie didn’t watch any of his predecessors growing up as his family thought the BBC was ‘too posh, too poncey’ and ‘didn’t have any black people on it.’

The journalist, 59, who grew up near Bolton with his Jamaican parents, said they only watched ITV at home as the news felt more ‘human.’

Despite now presenting the BBC News at Ten himself, Myrie said when he was growing up it felt like the corporation’s newsreaders were ‘handing down tablets of stone.’

He told the Radio Times: ‘The BBC was too posh, too poncey and they didn’t have any black people on it.

‘ITV had Big Trev [McDonald]. It was more human the way ITV did the news. I hope the BBC has now got to that level, but in those days it was like handing down tablets of stone, ‘This is public service broadcasting, these are your greens’.’

Clive Myrie (pictured) didn’t watch any of his predecessors growing up as his family thought the BBC was ‘too posh, too poncey’ and ‘didn’t have any black people on it’

The journalist (pictured), 59, who grew up near Bolton with his Jamaican parents, said they only watched ITV at home as the news felt more ‘human’

Myrie recalled watching Sir Trevor McDonald, who he referred to as ‘Big Trev’, as a youngster

‘Whereas ITV was like, ‘Let’s stick a bit of chocolate cake in there.’

Myrie said his parents, who moved to the UK in the 1960s, had been ‘initially disappointed’ by his chosen career path, having wanted him to pursue a ‘proper job.’

He said: ‘My parents left the life that they knew in Jamaica – beautiful, hot, sandy beaches – for a cold and sometimes inhospitable place.

‘They didn’t do that for their kids to grow up to be bums. They wanted doctors, dentists, accountants – proper jobs! They were initially disappointed, especially as I’d got a place at Middle Temple to be a barrister.’

Myrie, who took over from John Humphrys as the host of Mastermind in 2021, said that it is ‘vital’ that the BBC ‘hold fast to due impartiality.’ ‘That doesn’t mean 50/50 on either side,’ he said.

‘If 99 per cent of scientific institutions conclude that climate change is man-made, or if it’s clear that Vladimir Putin has launched an illegal invasion, that’s how you report it.

‘I think calling a spade a spade is a good way of keeping the public on side.’

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