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<\/p>\nNow one of the corporation’s most respected figures, you’d have thought he was always destined to become a BBC newsreader.<\/p>\n
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.’<\/p>\n
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.’<\/p>\n
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.’<\/p>\n
He told the Radio Times: ‘The BBC was too posh, too poncey and they didn’t have any black people on it.<\/p>\n
‘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’.’<\/p>\n
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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’<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/10\/10\/06\/76365717-12613393-image-a-3_1696915097708.jpg\")
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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’<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/10\/10\/06\/76365715-12613393-image-a-4_1696915118171.jpg\")
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Myrie recalled watching Sir Trevor McDonald, who he referred to as ‘Big Trev’, as a youngster<\/p>\n
‘Whereas ITV was like, ‘Let’s stick a bit of chocolate cake in there.’<\/p>\n
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.’<\/p>\n
He said: ‘My parents left the life that they knew in Jamaica – beautiful, hot, sandy beaches – for a cold and sometimes inhospitable place.<\/p>\n
‘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.’<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
‘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.<\/p>\n
‘I think calling a spade a spade is a good way of keeping the public on side.’<\/p>\n