Clive Myrie on Bristol, Windrush, war zones and Ukraine

Journalist Clive Myrie fronts BBC News shows, reports from war zones, asks the questions on Mastermind and will be one of the key presenters for July’s general election coverage.

But before that, he was a young reporter at BBC Radio Bristol – which he said helped him early in his career.

In an interview with the station, he explained why he wrote his latest book, which deals with Ukraine, the Windrush generation and his experiences across the world.

He also talked about how he hopes his media career can help people follow their own ambitions.

Myrie said he was inspired to write his latest book after the outbreak of war in Ukraine, when his Russian camera operator said the two country’s relationship was akin to that between the English and Irish in the 17th Century.

“There’s a sense they’re [Ukrainians] lesser people,” he said.

“A sense they are only good for cleaning and mopping up and doing menial jobs… that they’re, in lots of ways, sub-human.”

Myrie added it was this dynamic which had underpinned much of his foreign reporting over the years, eventually deciding to put this into a book.

He also referenced the Windrush Generation, which his parents were a part of, where people from the Caribbean came to the UK in search of a better life.

“The indigenous white population in this country who were not happy about this migration of black people from the Caribbean because they saw themselves as superior,” Myrie said.

“That dynamic of ‘no blacks, no dogs, no Irish’, all that kind of stuff – that’s the Britain they arrived into.”

His mother took a job as a seamstress, while his father worked at British Leyland, with Myrie explaining they “worked really hard”.

Myrie said when his mother got to the age of 65 in the mid-1990s, she wanted to prove to herself she could get a teaching qualification, adding she was “very, very proud” of that achievement.

Talking about becoming a journalist, he said BBC Radio Bristol helped him in the early days of his career.

“I remember being in the Radio Bristol newsroom, at three in the morning, still cutting a package, because I wanted it to sound the best it could be on the breakfast show.”

He said it was that work that got him recognised by other broadcasters, leading him to get positions that allowed him to report from across the world.

“I left BBC Radio Bristol in the late 1980s, early 1990s, at a time where no-one left the BBC… everybody thought I was completely and utterly bonkers – they could not believe what I was doing,” he said.

He later returned to BBC Points West after a stint at Independent Radio Network (IRN), as well as doing weekend shifts in London.

He also worked on the Today programme under editor Roger Mosey, who encouraged Myrie to follow his ambitions.

He said social mobility is an “issue we have not got on top of as a society”.

“I am in the BBC, I am surrounded by people of a certain class – there’s no question about that – and its the same in any FTSE 100 company or across the rest of the media.

“It feels like an intractable problem and its partly why you have a lot of young black people who are still struggling to get into the higher echelons of the media.”

He said he doesn’t see himself as a “flag-carrying activist” on the issue – “just as Trevor McDonald didn’t” – instead saying he just does his job.

But he added he hopes that his example will help others realise it is possible to get into the industry.