Clive Myrie on Bristol, Windrush, war zones and Ukraine

Journalist Clive Myrie presents BBC News, reports from war zones, asks 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 start his career.

In an interview with the station, he explained why he wrote his latest book, which is about Ukraine, the Windrush generation and his experiences around 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 relationship between the two countries was similar to that between the English and Irish in the 17th century.

“There is a feeling that they (Ukrainians) are smaller people,” he said.

“In the sense that they’re only good for scrubbing and cleaning and doing light jobs…that they’re in many ways sub-human.”

Myrie added that this dynamic underpinned much of her foreign reporting over the years, eventually deciding to turn it into a book.

He also referred to the Windrush generation, of which his parents were a part, where people from the Caribbean came to Britain in search of a better life.

“The indigenous white population of 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 sort of stuff – that’s the Britain they’ve got.”

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

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

Speaking 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 as good as possible on the breakfast show.”

He said that work got him recognized by other broadcasters, which led to positions that allowed him to report from around the world.

“I left BBC Radio Bristol in the late 1980s, early 1990s, at a time when nobody left the BBC… everyone thought I was completely and utterly mad – they couldn’t believe what I was doing,” he said he.

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

She also worked on the Today program under editor Roger Mosey, who encouraged Myrie to pursue her ambitions.

He said social mobility was a “problem we haven’t tackled as a society”.

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

“It feels like an intractable problem, and it’s partly why you have a lot of young black people still struggling to get into the upper echelons of media.”

He said he didn’t see himself as a “flag-carrying activist” on the issue — “just like Trevor McDonald didn’t” — instead saying he was just doing his job.

But he added that he hopes his example will help others realize it is possible to enter the industry.