The Sunday Times Magazine • 19wedding anniversary, he
seems blissfully happy.
What’s their secret?
“We have exactly the
same interest in so many
things and I think that
helps. We think alike, we
feel the same way politically
about things,” he says,
wondering if the work
trips help too. “Maybe
absence does make the
heart grow fonder. Every
time you come back it’s
an adventure.”
I press him to tell me the
one thing that might trigger
cross words. Driving duties,
dishwasher loading, duvet
hogging? He thinks long and hard before
half-heartedly offering, “Probably me
buying stuff. I like knick-knacks.” To
unwind he hits the antiques markets
with Catherine and professes to be “quite
good” at haggling. What’s the strategy?
“Go half and then build up. Whatever it is,
go half. But if there’s a bit of a suggestion
they might be able to go down further,
maybe [go] 40 per cent, then go up.”
Myrie also enjoys fashion (“I know the
difference between an A-line skirt and
a pencil skirt”) and his first writing job
as a student was for Black Beauty & Hair
magazine. He lights up talking about
Armani scarfs and suits — “Paul Smith
doesn’t work on me as much as Armani
does” — and laughs at the idea of a BBC
wardrobe allowance before confessing
that he has such a budget for Mastermind.
How much are we talking? “It’s enough to
get a decent suit and the odd tie, let’s just
put it like that.” In his twenties, when he
had “decent money”, he started collecting
watches and is wearing a beautiful antique
Rolex. His literary festival chic look is
carefully considered: “It’s me trying to
show I’m three-dimensional. This thing
about newsreaders — you sit there, you
read and it’s just about death, destruction,
pain and suffering. There’s a whole other
world out there and a whole
other world to my
personality, so I only wear
suits if I have to.” Would
Fun Clive ever do Strictly
Come Dancing? “Never,”
he says, firmly. “Would you
take me seriously reading
the news afterwards?
Would you take me
seriously in Ukraine?
I’m not sure you would.”
Multiple dimensions
aside, Myrie is clearly
deeply ambitious and that
drive was planted growing
up in Bolton, the middle
of seven children. “My
siblings reckon I was thechosen one because I was
the first one born in the
UK,” he says, eyebrow
raised. His father made
car batteries for British
Leyland; his mother,
who had been a teacher
in Jamaica, became a
seamstress in Britain
and ended up making
clothes for Mary Quant.
“She had to do it from
scratch — and that meant
working hard,” Myrie says.
“That work ethic has been
instilled in all of us, and also
that sense that because
you’re black you’ve got
to work twice as hard.”
His parents divorced after he left home
and now live in the same neighbourhood
in Derby. He credits his mum with giving
him empathy, but his dad was “a fairly
distant figure” growing up, an authoritarian
who struggled to adjust to life in Britain.
“That might have been something that
affected the way he responded to his
own family members,” Myrie says. “I think
all the kids would have perhaps wanted
[more affection] but I suppose he was just
from a generation that wasn’t really
touchy-feely.”
At this point he briefly pauses our
conversation to dash off and do a scheduled
phone interview promoting a BBC Radio 3
programme about classical music. Back
within 30 minutes as promised, he returns
to family matters. He has 19 nieces and
nephews but decided against having
children himself. “I knew I wanted to travel
and Catherine felt the same way. I suppose
we reached the point where we didn’t feel
it would be fair,” he says. “It is something
that we don’t regret.”
Having no children certainly suits the
foreign correspondent lifestyle. Having an
ego helps too. Myrie has “enough ego to be
a good reporter, not enough ego to be a pain
in the arse”, one of his former editors told
Radio Times. “You have to have a bit of ego,
no question,” Myrie says
unapologetically. “That
self-confidence might
get you into a particular
situation that allows you
to tell a story better, might
get you across a checkpoint,
might just get you through
— bravado and that kind of
stuff. But ultimately you’ve
got to hope it doesn’t
overwhelm the story
you’re trying to tell.”
Determined to be
defined by his work over
anything else, Myrie
avoided reporting on
“black issues” in his
early days. “The BBCBelow: Lynne and
her son earlier
this year in her
garden in DerbyAbove: with his
mother, Lynne, and
younger brother
Garfield, 1967He is the middle
of seven
children. “My
siblings reckon
I was the
chosen one
because I was
the first one
born in the UK”