When my parents first came here, it was legal to not serve them in a pub

BBC NEWS PRESENTER AND HOST OF MASTERMIND CLIVE MYRIE TALKS TO HANNAH STEPHENSON ABOUT DODGING BULLETS, AVOIDING PTSD, AND DEALING WITH RACIST ABUSE IN HIS CAREER

DURING a career spanning over 30 years, journalist Clive Myrie has dodged bullets and bombs in war zones in Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan and, most recently, Ukraine, and reported on horrific scenes, from mass shootings in America to the front line of the Covid wards.

Today, on a Zoom call from his north London home office, piled high with books, the journalist, newsreader and presenter of BBC News and Mastermind is looking relaxed, dressed down in a baby blue sweatshirt, as we discuss his memoir, Everything is Everything.

He has seen the worst of humankind on assignments at home and abroad – death, destruction and devastation, both emotional and physical. One wonders how he sleeps at night.

“I try not to take it home with me. I’m pretty good at compartmentalising and shutting things out.

“But images stay with you. They’re in your head and there might be a moment of crisis and those images come back and can impair the way that you function, which is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder [PTSD].

“And I haven’t had that yet. The images come back, but they don’t stop me being able to do my job or to function day to day.

“Could they do that at some point in the future? Maybe.

“I could well have PTSD, but it hasn’t manifested itself in a form that stops me being able to continue doing my work.

“When I do come back from a difficult assignment, I try to completely shut that away.

“I have so many other things going on in my life in terms of art, music and culture.

“I will go to art galleries and concerts and to jazz bars. I will try to find a way to push those images at the back of my mind.”

Clive, 59, has been married to Catherine, former editor of a publishing house, for 25 years. They met at the launch of a book on Swiss cheese in 1992.