Craig Oliver: Hello and welcome to Desperately Seeking Wisdom with me, Craig Oliver. I started this podcast when I felt that my daily life was a grind, not a gift, and I wanted to work out how to be more fulfilled to find some answers, or at least try. I decided to talk to as many well-known people and experts as I could about what life has taught them, especially during the tougher times.
What wisdom would they pass on? Our guest today is Clive Myrie, one of the most recognisable broadcasters in the uk, who's equally at home reporting from a war zone as he is in the studio grilling contestants on Mastermind or presenting BBC news at 10. In this wide-ranging conversation, we began by talking about the wisdom behind the title of his best-selling book.
‘Everything is Everything’, a phrase he was taught by his mother.
Clive Myrie: Yeah, a lot of people associate it with the former Fugee Lauren Hill, but it's actually got nothing to do with her. Um, and in fact, I suspect she got it from what is a classic Jamaican Patois, and I think across the Caribbean actually saying, um, which is that everything is everything. Everything will be all right. It's, uh, a phrase that people use when they're having a bit of trouble. In life. Um, everything is everything. Everything will work out. It's means essentially that no matter how bad things get, no matter how bleak things might look, if you have a positive attitude, things might turn around and it's more likely that things will turn around.
If you do have a positive attitude and you try to sort of will things into the kind of state that you want them to be in, um, is that something that you feel. It's something that I think my family certainly felt, um, when I was growing up. You know, I am the, the product of Windrush generation parents who arrived here in the early sixties.
And, you know, it wasn't, wasn't easy, you know, adapting to a new way of life, adapting to the cold, seeing snow, you know, and on top of all that, you know, trying to find work. In a land that at the time, remember employer, an employer could legally say, you don't you. You are not gonna be allowed to stay in my hotel 'cause you're black. You are not gonna be allowed to work in my foundry or my shop or my business because you're black. And I can say that. And that's the way it is.
Craig Oliver: It's interesting that you mentioned the Lauryn Hill song, 'cause that was the first thing that came to mind when I saw the title. Mm-Hmm. And I went and looked at it when I was thinking about questions for you.
And what's interesting about that song is it's sort of a protest song. And saying, look, you know, we'll get there. You know, we may not do it in my time, but we'll get there, sort of thing. But it's also a sort of song that's slightly about. Accepting the way things are and that you'll perhaps be happier if you accept the way things are.
So she, she sings in it, it seems we lose the game before we can even start to play. Mm-Hmm. Who made these rules we're so easily confused and led astray. Mm-Hmm. And then she goes into that idea of like, actually try and think of it a different way. Everything is everything. Mm-Hmm. Is that, is that something that you, that's resonating with you. It sort of resonated with me when I heard it.
Clive Myrie: Not really, to be honest with you, the impression that I get is that she's saying, well, you know, it is what it is. It is what it is. So just accept it. And that's not how I see it at all.
Craig Oliver: I think what she's saying is you can protest and you should protest and you should not accept things that are that way. But actually in reality, you are part of something bigger and greater and that change may take time and you also need to accept that side of things as well.
Clive Myrie: Yeah, change can take longer than one hopes, but you can also change things individually. You can also change your own circumstances. And if you do continually think about the bigger picture, I mean, a classic example is climate change. One of the issues I think for individuals is that it's such a massive problem.
It's such a massive thing. You know, the whole world is melting or freezing. There's nothing you can do as an individual. Actually, there is. Chuck out the wood burner, although they are really, really good. You know, there are lots of things people can do.
Craig Oliver: It was interesting, we spoke to Rory Stewart the other day, and it seems that sometimes in Rory's life that he'd felt that he was responsible for everything. He had to change everything. Which doesn't mean to say that..
Clive Myrie: That would drive you nuts though, that would drive you nuts
Craig Oliver Well, that was kind of the conversation that we were having is that, that if you…
Clive Myrie: I'm not saying Rory's nuts by the way, but, but I mean, to have that. Mentality, I think would drive you bananas.And I'm not sure many people can live like that. The people who do live like that and do try to change on a big scale. You know, whether you are Martin Luther King, or Gandhi or someone Mandela, these are incredible individuals and most of us just aren't incredible individuals. We just trying to get on and live, you know?
Craig Oliver: Let's keep going with the ‘Everything is Everything’ thing, because I thought, reading your book, which is a great book. I really enjoyed it. But when you apply that thinking to your mother and father, it was very different it seems. When you talked about your father, he said, you say he created a home and lived among us, but he was very distant. And that he sort of seemed to struggle with, what was his place in the world? What was his role as a father? Who was he, as a man who lived in Jamaica, who'd come to the uk?
Clive Myrie: He had his own little business. He was a cobbler, made shoes in Jamaica. Good-looking man when he was younger. Had an eye for the ladies and the ladies had an eye for him. He was happy-go-lucky, carefree. And then he married my mother. He had children and he all of a sudden had responsibilities and that may have been easier for him to handle in an environment that he knew that he was happy with, that he was comfortable in. And that was of course, the sunshine of Jamaica.
But the siren call came from my uncle, who was in the RAF during the war, and Uncle Cecil rang him up, got in touch with him and said, look, you know, I'm having a great time over here in the UK. You should come on over, make a bit of money, and you know, give the kids the kind of education that you didn’t have and it'll be fun. Why not give it a go? And he came here and he ended up becoming trapped. He ended up falling into a life that he didn't expect he would be living…that happy-go-lucky man that he was, who was having fun, you know, suddenly had to knuckle down in an environment that was completely alien. That was hostile at times.
Craig Oliver: There was, there was a phrase that you use in the book, you say is almost as if he resented England for taking him in.
Clive Myrie: Yeah, because he wasn't happy here. And in a way, he sort of blamed Britain for providing this opportunity that in his mind, didn't turn out to be what he thought it would be, but it was too late for him to get out because he had kids, he had responsibilities, and he had to knuckle down.
Craig Oliver: And how did that manifest itself in terms of his relationship with you? You say there was distance?
Clive Myrie: Yeah, distance, distance. I mean, you know. He's of that generation, I think didn't particularly express their feelings. He felt his contribution to the family was to bring in the paycheck and, and that's what kept people going. But you wouldn't be having any particularly deep conversations about how he was feeling, or he would have conversations with you about how you were feeling about any particular circumstance or problem or issue at school or whatever. That would be my mum who would have that conversation.
Craig Oliver: And did you clock that and think, I don't wanna be like that?
Clive Myrie: When you are in the middle of it, do you get that? He's just distant, or at least he's not relating to me the way my mother relates to me. But then he's not my mother. He's a man and he's the dad. And maybe that's the role that he's been assigned and that's how it works out. So as a kid, I don't suppose, I thought, oh my God, he's not talking to me about how school was, or, you know, I didn't feel that. You only recognize that that perhaps is a deficiency in your relationship much later on.
Craig Oliver: And you describe your mother almost as if she's a kind of force of nature. Very different. That she was a strong, strong personality. If she felt her, she was blocked in one way, then she would try something else.
Clive Myrie: Yeah, she was optimistic, positive, totally. ‘Everything is Everything’ for her. In fact, she'd be the person who would use the phrase in our home. She's just a very determined woman. She hoped and wanted to be a teacher here in the uk. She sensed that it would be hard because she would have to retrain because the qualifications she was told, that she had in Jamaica, were not those that would work here in the uk, so she'd have to retrain. That was fully her intention. Night classes, whatever, while working to build a new home for her family. And then she fell pregnant with me. So that made it a bit tricky. And so she had to get money fast and didn't have the time to retrain, so she became a, a seamstress.
Craig Oliver: It's so interesting 'cause it's a, a moment in life where it seems like you've set yourself heart on something. And this is a theme that comes up a lot when we talked about you set your heart on something, it doesn't quite happen. But actually the other thing, blossoms, if you let it…
Clive Myrie: Because, ‘Everything is Everything’,I come back to that again, you know? Because you have to make it work because if you don't, then what happens? You stew, you are resentful. You don't have any money practically on a practical level because you're not earning. So you have to find a way round things. And I suppose in a way that's the story of, of my life. I always wanted to be a journalist, but my parents being first-generation, immigrants wanted, you know, their firstborn in the UK to have a proper job. So it would be the law or become a dentist or an accountant or something, you know, middle-class and upstanding. And, and that's the case I think with, with all immigrants, frankly.
The idea that you would follow your heart is not really there. So I found a way of doing what I wanted to do, but also at the same time trying to appease my parents. So while I studied law University, I, I ended up becoming a journalist in the end.
Craig Oliver: There's a story in the book about your mother where you didn't talk much as a young child. And the teacher picked up on it and called your mom in and said, you know, Clive's not talking. And it's interesting, your mum's response seems to have been. Pretty defensive, but when I read that, I thought maybe the teacher had a point.
Clive Myrie: The teacher would've had a point if she was correct. The fact is I could not stop talking at home yet for some reason I couldn't talk at school.
So why was that? From my mum's perspective, it was because I was in an alien environment and I was nervous. I mean, I wanted to start the book with my first experience. What could I remember? That was the first thing that happened to me, and that was being so frightened of going to primary school that I threw up on my first day, and I remember that, but my mum said, there's something else before that, and that was you not being able to speak. In the public setting of a classroom.
Craig Oliver: Did that come back when she said that?
Clive Myrie: No, it didn't actually. No. I remember being sick and not the non-speaking, but her sense was very much that he can speak. It's not like he was born mute. So what is the difference between being at home and talking nine to the dozen, or whatever the phrase is? And being at school and not being able to speak. Well, the difference is the environment. What the teacher saw. I mean, you know, perfectly reasonably perhaps was, you know, there's something deeper going on here that's, that's problematic. But my mum was a teacher in Jamaica. Yeah. So she understood, you know, the bright kids and the slow kids and the sporty kids, and she understood where that dynamic could be problematic, you know, for a kid in an alien environment. And she believed that was the case with me.
Craig Oliver: And before we leave your parents, I just wanted to talk about like this, their sacrifice. Your father sailed here. On his own. Then your mom joined, I think she flew here. She flew here.And you had an older sister that was left behind? While they set themselves up. And, and there there was a name for those type of children called ‘Barrel children’. Just talk us through that. You weren't born yet, but your older sister was left behind.
Clive Myrie: Yeah, my older sister was left behind and two half-brothers. I think there's some weird statistic of a few hundred children who were born to Windrush generation parents in Jamaica who came over with them, but something like 600,000. Were left behind and I think there was very much the idea that these people would leave everything they knew, leave their children, come over, make a bit of money, then go back. Or they'd make a bit of money and then get, bring the kids over. That's pretty much what happened with a lot of the Windrush generation parents.
Craig Oliver: That must have must been incredibly tough for your parents, and I think suppose the first thing you think of is that it's gonna be tough for them. Leaving the kids behind. But also for your half-brothers and your sister, terrible. I mean, the impact must have been absolutely terrible.
Clive Myrie: Yeah, absolutely terrible. You know, they're losing their parents, but that was the equation and the calculation that a lot of these Windrush generation parents made that it was better to try to sort of form the nucleus of a new life. And bring in the children that they had previously into an environment that was comfortable and secure rather than bring them with them at the same time and struggle. And remember, while there were all these sort of, you know, fabulous images of the UK and the Motherland and the Queen and the Royal family and you know, it's all gonna be hunky dory, you know, messages were getting back to the Caribbean about how difficult it was.
Craig Oliver: And how are your brothers and sisters? How were they? Was it with the, I mean, I think you said that one of your brothers found it particularly troubling.
Clive Myrie: Yes. Um, well, they, but they both did - Lionel and Peter - they both found it very difficult. I think, you know, essentially they were brought up at a crucial time in their development going into their teenage years.
They were brought up by their grandparents, so they have their parents, then they disappear. Then they have their grandparents, then they disappear. And it's a double whammy. And the sense of alienation, and I write this in the book, I mean, I didn't appreciate that at all, and I wish I did, and maybe I could have helped in some way. I mean, you know, they are coming to Britain. My older sister would've been about nine. I think my two older brothers, uh, would've been early teens. Uh, 11, 12, 13. They would be the would've been speaking Jamaican Patois.
Craig Oliver: And I also imagine they must have been just, what? What the hell is this? Yeah.
Clive Myrie: Yeah, what’s this? Freezing cold? It's freezing cold. They don't, they don't know. They dunno anything about, you know, the big football teams at the time, United and Liverpool. So there's no connection there with their schoolmates. They might feel weird even opening their mouths and they dunno who the latest pop stars are. Who the hell are the Bay City Rollers? I mean, you know, all that basic stuff. Would mean that they would feel detached and separated and at the same time they're adjusting to a new life in a household that they don't know. Yeah. With younger brothers and sisters that they don't know, like me. Really, really difficult. I didn't appreciate, I didn't appreciate how difficult it was.
Craig Oliver: And you haven't had children and you write in the book, ‘we've come from big families. I'm from a family of seven Catherine's, from a family of five kids. We weren't desperate for that kind of familial glue’.
Clive Myrie: Yeah, we weren't…something that I'd always wanted to do was travel the world. And it got to the point where we realized that we just wanted to keep doing this and to bring children with us would've been tricky. And I suppose now that you mention it, that is an echo of the Windrush generation parents actually.
Craig Oliver: Yeah. I can see that, that you….having seen that, but it sounds like you don't have regrets about that.

Clive Myrie: No. No. Funnily enough. Absolutely not.
Craig Oliver: You are okay with it? That's good.
Clive Myrie: Okay? I'm very, very okay with it now. I mean, you know, I may have been, ah, you know, 10, 15 years ago, but yeah, we have, we have a hell of a lot of nieces and nephews and that, that's still, that's enough.
Craig Oliver: Ok, a bit of a gear change here. Racism is obviously a massive theme in the book. I mean, you talk about it being a memoir of love, hate, and hope. I'm interested in the fact that you say that ‘my parents try to avoid racism, kept their heads down in a way to deal with it’. But you feel differently and you say, ‘I have decided certainly in this book, that it needs to be confronted, it needs to be taken on head on’.
There's a lot in those sentences. So let's try and unpack it. When you say your parents try to sort of avoid it, not acknowledge it, just explain.
Clive Myrie: Yhat when you are in that sort of milieu and you are living it, you are, you are not fully understanding what's going on. So the idea that my parents were not going to the pub, were not going to restaurants…
Craig Oliver: And that's specifically because they expected…?
Clive Myrie: I don't know. But talking to my parents now for the book, I get the impression that was part of it. My mother, I don't think was someone who would be going to sort of dances and having a sort of, you know, nightlife when she was in Jamaica, even when she was young. She taught English at a church school, and I get the impression she was a bit of a homebody anyway, whereas my dad was the opposite. In Jamaica, my mum remains a homebody in the UK and that helps deal with the possibility that there may be people out there beyond the confines, be beyond the sort of security of the four walls of our home, who could do harm, who could be horrible, who could be nasty because of the color of her skin. So that fits her personality and with my father, because he was simply unhappy about being there anyway, the idea that he would be going out and enjoying life, he wasn't in that kind of mood.
Craig Oliver: And what was your experience of it when you were growing up? Was it abusive at school? Did you get a lot of it there?
Clive Myrie: No, no. I didn't. I didn't at all. There'd be the odd comment after the, uh, drama serial ‘Roots’. You know, there'd be comments about Kunta, Kinte and that kind of thing, but it was very sporadic and didn't feel to me as if it was harmful. I was not called the N-word. The people who tended to be abused at school were people of the South Asian population. Bolton had a very small black community. The bigger black community was was in Mosside, in Manchester. So we were sort of like, exotic creatures almost. You know, we weren't seen as a threat and I was good at football and, and good at studies, so people wanted me to be on their football team and do stuff. Yeah. It was much more difficult for my friends who were from the subcontinent.
Craig Oliver: You certainly had experience of it in later life. I mean wou're saying that, you know, people sending you shit in the post death threats. Yeah. What was it like experiencing that?
Clive Myrie: When it first began to happen, when I was gaining prominence as a journalist, it would get me very angry, very angry, and, and I'd want to sort of rip these people's heads off. I now simply have an overwhelming sense of pity that these people are so sad that they're willing to sort of go to the lengths of collecting feces and put it in the post to send to you.
Craig Oliver: And you saw a man being jailed because of it, I think. 'cause he, he'd made death threats against him. That must have been an extraordinary experience seeing somebody literally yes. Go through a trial and go to prison?
Clive Myrie: That was, that was much scarier because it transpired that this man who had made death threats towards me and, and, uh, a couple of other people in the BBC radio Sports Presenter and Lewis Hamilton, bizarrely, that was scarier because he had been making threats to shoot me.
And it transpired after the court case for sending malicious communications and in fact also child pornography that was found at his home when the police arrested him. It turned out that he had been prosecuted for firearms offenses in the past, so it wasn't just rhetoric potentially that could have come from this man. He clearly could have had access to weapons and he clearly could have carried out the threat. That he typed into the BBC complaints system.
Craig Oliver: It must have been frightening to be aware of.
Clive Myrie: Yes. I mean, I was, I was, and I write about this in the book, I was apprehensive leaving the BBC in the evening, late at night after I was informed of what this man was writing. I was apprehensive.
Craig Oliver: We spoke to, this is very different, but Emily Maitlis, we talked to and she'd been stalked. And she was, one of the things that she said was that there was part of her that sort of felt compassion for him because it was such a waste. It was so pointless. Him getting involved in that. I mean, do you just feel like that there's no understanding or….?
Clive Myrie: I mean, if. I used the word pity and that is what I felt. I think you used the word compassion just then. I mean, no, no, no, no,
Craig Oliver: And I think that's, no, I totally see. I don't feel that I totally see the difference because the pity that somebody has actually got themselves into this.
Clive Myrie: That this is such an important part of who they are, that they're willing to sort of act out on it. I mean, there are lots of things I watch on television and I cannot stand and I think is ridiculous and I think is madness. But the idea that I would sit down and become Mr. Angry from Kent and actually sort of make an effort to put it out there, I think is just time-consuming and just weird.
Craig Oliver: It's worse than weird. It's, you know, it's completely wrong. Terrible, many awful thing to do. But I suppose a good use of the word pity is that somebody who's just so blind that they can't see how terrible it is really.
Clive Myrie: Yeah. If I am pushed to the, uh, into the corner of trying to understand this person, I think, well, I mean, I wonder what, did you have some bad experience with someone who's black? Is there something in his history that's led him to sort of think this? I mean, you know, racism is so irrational. It's astonishingly irrational. The fact that I am to have a little bit more melanin in my skin than you Craig, and yet that somehow allows society to behave in a completely different way to me. I mean, it's completely bloody bonkers.
Craig Oliver: It is totally mad, but it is real, isn't it? And it's, it's interesting how trying to understand it. Is it fear of the other? It's really about the person themselves and their own inadequacies, I think.
Clive Myrie: Oh totally. Absolutely. Racism does say so much more about the perpetrator.
Craig Oliver: There's another fascinating story in the book where Catherine, your wife, who's Irish meets your grandmother. Mm-Hmm. In the Caribbean and your. Grandmother's response is to speak to her in Spanish. Tell that story. 'cause I think it says a lot.
Clive Myrie: It does. It says, it says a little bit about dementia. My grandmother was, had vascular dementia, and that's a condition that sees you reach back into the past to open a wardrobe with draws inside that you haven't opened for decades. Because the way that the brain works when you have dementia is that, uh, you're not really in the here and now and you end up remembering things and, and things come back to you that you hadn't recalled or thought about for a long, long time. And my grandmother was in the advanced stages of dementia and my Auntie, Auntie Maisie, was looking after her.
And, uh, Catherine and I were in Jamaica visiting. Catherine is white. We walked in and big hug from Auntie Maisie, uh, for Catherine whom she'd met before, but my grandmother hadn't met her before, and she was just shocked at this white person in her home. She couldn't quite work out what was going on, and the dementia was part of it, and she was suddenly taken back seeing this white person.
Because I don't think, I mean, there wouldn't have been any other white people who would've visited my auntie because there would've been no reason to. Black friends, black Jamaicans, other members of my family, all black. So this was probably a white person who walked into her home, that an experience that probably hadn't happened for a hell of a long time.
And she was taken back because of the dementia to her childhood when she was seven or eight, and she was growing up in the Panama Canal zone where her father, my great-grandfather, was working, building the Panama Canal, one of hundreds of thousands of Caribbean laborers who helped build that mighty waterway. And she was taken back. Seeing Catherine's, this white face, and she started speaking Spanish. I had no idea she could speak Spanish. ‘Casa y Boca. Casa y Boca.’ She was saying, shut your mouth. Shut your mouth. I'm not your slave. Clearl, words and ideas that she grew up with while her father was working, building the Panama. Canal. She must have heard some white overseer say that to a black worker. Or maybe it was the teacher in the school where she was learning Spanish. Saying that to her ‘shut up, shut up. I'm not your slave’ might have been the words that she would've heard from, you know, whispered under the breath of a black worker who, who's being berated in some way for something they did on the Panama Canal. So all this came out.
Craig Oliver: I like that story. 'cause it's so layered, isn't it? And it's like different generations, but it's almost, maybe I'm overreaching it, but it's almost like a metaphor for life in some ways. It's like the layers of history and how the past can bubble up into the present. And things that you are not really thinking about. Having an influence on you and an impact on you.
Clive Myrie: Yeah. Yeah, totally. I knew it was the dementia talking. I didn't know my grandmother spoke Spanish or had any idea of the Spanish language, I had no idea she'd been in Panama, grew up there and you are right. All these layers of meaning and of my family history were presented to me simply by virtue of the fact that my wife happened to be white.
Craig Oliver: And it's often that those things come to the surface that when you unpick them, they, they make sense when you understand the context and unpick them. But in that moment, it's like an irrationa thing that you don't understand what's going on here.
Clive Myrie: Yeah, totally. I, it's completely bonkers. I said to my auntie, I said, Auntie, Maisie, what was that? And she said, oh, don't worry. It's the dementia talking. It's the dementia talking. I said, but what was that? She was saying it sounded like Spanish. And uh, she said, yeah, she grew up in the canal zone. And I'm like, what? I then went off and got a whole load of books. And there aren't that many, it's really interesting, there aren't that many on the Caribbean contribution to the building of the Panama Canal and the foundations for the American century. I'm working on a project to try to get a little bit more knowledge and public awareness of the contribution that the Caribbean working class, ordinary Caribbean people made towards the building of this incredible feat of engineering.
Craig Oliver: So we've talked quite a bit about racism and touched a bit on slavery. One thing that comes through in the book is you are very, very critical of people who criticize, woke younger generation. You basically say that you are sort of on the side of the woke. Can you explain that?
Clive Myrie: What is woke? That's the starting point. Is it a pejorative term? Is it the term of abuse or is it simply, you know, being aware of life's issues and problems and kinks? I couldn't imagine anyone not calling Martin Luther King woke, Mother Teresa, any kind of person. Who is trying to promote a sense of equality, social justice, fairness can be labeled as woke. Now, does that mean some people who are trying to promote better understanding between cultures and faiths and races and so on, do they go about things in a ham-fisted way or in a way that is alienating? Possibly, perhaps? I don't know. But a lot of these people aren't, they're simply trying to promote a sense of fairness in what is on many levels, uh, a world that is unfair.
Craig Oliver: One of the first guests that we had on the podcast, in fact the first guest was the great George Alagiah, who you know, great man, sadly died last year. And he talked about his experience of like, his tendency was, how do you build bridges? How do you, you reach out? How do you soothe often that people say stupid things aren't racist?
He felt, but actually you can. You just need to be able to talk to them. And he was talking about the experience of young people at the BBC who were much more like, no, we can't tolerate any form of microaggression. We can't tolerate anything. And he was saying he understood that and that he was struggling with his own inclination, which was to soothe, smooth, sounds like you are more on the other side of that.
Clive Myrie: I mean, soothing and smoothing is, there's …
Craig Oliver: They’re my words not his.
Clive Myrie: Yeah, sure, sure, sure. There is a, there's a place for that. There's also a place for sort of thinking, well. Do you not know right from wrong?
Craig Oliver: I suppose the point people make is, I mean, it's the argument about intention, isn't it?
And that people say and do stupid things and aren't really, really thoughtful. Mm. Is there a danger that in not accepting anything, that it just becomes attritional? And a lot of people would say, look, the divide is widening rather than closing.
Clive Myrie: I think the divide is widening. Is that because you have Gen Z being overzealous? Or is that because any kind of change can potentially, for an established class that has had the rubber of the green for most of their lives is suddenly seeing that rub of the green disappear? Is seeing those advantages disappear and that can entrench people. That can make people angry. Very defensive and defensive.
Absolutely. But you know, what is it that allows someone to say that? I don't think we are equal in the way that they behave. They don't say this out. Loud, but in the way that they behave or their attitude simply because you happen to have a penis and you don't have a penis. A man and a woman or someone is black and non-white.
At what point do you say enough is enough? You are just talking rubbish. And what is the difference between me and you? Simply because of the color of my skin. Yeah. One of the titles that I was gonna have for the book we alighted on everything is everything in the end was, you know, warmed by the same summer, which is from the famous Sherlock speech in Merchant of Venice.
You know, ‘prick me, do I not bleed? Are we not warmed by the same summers?’ How can it be that I'm not gonna let you stay in my boarding house which happened with one of Enoch Powell's constituents in the 1960s, which was what led him to write the Rivers of Blood speech. What can allow that person to say, I'm not letting you stay in my house 'cause you're black and I shouldn't have to do that because you are black.
Craig Oliver: There's an assumption isn't there by a lot of people that it's getting better and that we're on a constant upward curve of moving away and others are saying, well, no. Are we on a trajectory of things getting better in terms of race or not.
Clive Myrie: It's Martin Luther King's famous quote, the arc of history. It, it bends towards justice, it bends, so it's going that way. But every now and again, it dips a little bit. There are moments that we should all be proud of and there are moments when we should be less proud, I would say, uh, and maybe I would, wouldn't I, that multiculturalism has been a good thing. I would say it's enriched this country. It's made it the envy of the world on lots of levels, which I think not enough people appreciate.
Craig Oliver: And you say I'm, ‘I'm as English as John Major’ - interesting choice - ‘or the bulldog, but also proudly black Caribbean’. And then you say ‘..like Denzel Washington said, I'm very proud to be black, but black is not all I am. I love fish and chips with mushy peas. Oh yeah. 'cause I'm northern, but I We, we are all a mixture of different things, and that's what I love about multiculturalism and modern Britain.’
Clive Myrie: I think it is the manifestation of everything we've been been talking about, the manifestation of a sense that we're all equal, that we're all worn by the same sum, no matter what culture we're from because we're all human beings. You know, it's accepting that and understanding that from both sides. That I think is important, but also the difficulty you can have. No question. Communities that, uh, want to stay entrenched, that don't buy into the full idea of what multiculturalism is. Now, yes, that means you can pray the way you want to pray, but it also means accepting fairness, equality and human rights.
Craig Oliver: And there's an extreme example of that in the book where you are very angry at the 7/7 terrorists and you say ‘three of the four killers were born British, second-generation immigrants like me, were their parents from Pakistan. One moved to the UK when he was only a year old. I felt overwhelming anger towards the four men. I was angry at the men's failure to have brought into the idea of multicultural Britain. Their failure is brown people to buy into the values of tolerance and freedom that underpin liberal democracy’.
Clive Myrie: Yeah. They wanted to be able to do what they wanted to do. In the mosque, the food that they eat, so on and so forth. But what they didn't want was equality. What they didn't want was fairness. What they didn't want was this sense that white people was equal to them as other brown people are to them. And that annoyed me.
Craig Oliver: And they literally wanted to murder people in order to force their worldview.
Clive Myrie: Absolutely. And one of the people that they murdered was a good friend of my wife who died in the Tavistock Bus bombing. And while there may be some white people, a minority out there who don't want to accept a multicultural Britain, there are brown people too, and black people too, and that is as appalling from my point of view.
Craig Oliver: I wanna explore that a little bit further, but through some of the big figures that you talk round about, you'd be one of the things that's clear in the book. You've moved almost every continent and done an extraordinary number of foreign correspondent jobs. But in South Africa, you were obviously struck by Mandela and his sort of desire for forgiveness and restorative justice. And I think what was so extraordinary about him, it's almost a cliche to talk about, was his ability to say, we are warmed by the same sun,’ and even though you have jailed me for three decades, I am obsessed by this idea of Ubuntu, which is I'm only human because you are human.
Clive Myrie: Absolutely. He's the embodiment of everything that I tried to get across in the book. I mean, he came under enormous pressure when he was in Robben Island from the younger, more angry ANC activists who were in prison with him. Enormous pressure to renounce this idea of non-violence, to take the war to the white authorities and to inflame the townships. Enormous pressure. And he was seen as this sad old git who didn't understand what this war was about..
Craig Oliver: But he was the wise one, wasn't he?
Clive Myrie: Totally. Because he'd sit there, they're giving him all this, the younger ones, and he's listening to everything, and he's listening to everything, but he knows in his heart of hearts that reaching out to the other side is part of the way to deal with this, and also making it clear that the repression that black people were under that was not gonna be solved by oppressing white people.
And to have that attitude despite everything that happened, Sharpeville massacre, extrajudicial killings, the murders in, in jail of activist Steve Biko, the ill-treatment that black people suffer. To still have that sense in your head that were all warned by the same summers is, is astonishing. And he was absolutely right.
Craig Oliver: I totally agree. But it's also, it's slightly more than that, isn't it? It's…you've seen people that you love and care about, murdered. You believe you are on the right path, but you can't be sure because you don't know that the end is going to be what you hope it is. You can't, you want, you believe you are pushing people in the right direction. So the strength of character, I think there to continue with that, to persuade others to set aside your own bitterness and anger. And see that there's a different way is, is the most extraordinary.
Clive Myrie: It's it's extraordinary, but it's also the result of having a lot of time to think. And he had that in prison,
Craig Oliver: But he could have gone the other way, couldn't he? He could have become bitter.
Clive Myrie: Absolutely. And, and some did, but he didn't. And I think a lot of that stemmed from his ideas of, of how communities can live together, whether it's from, uh, from Gandhi or his own Methodism.
Craig Oliver: We talked to one of your colleagues, Lyse Doucet and she said it for her. It was basically do unto others as you would have done unto yourself.
Clive Myrie: I think that's a big, a big part of it for Mandela, and it's actually that quote, I have in the book. I make the point that I'm not particularly religious, but if there is anything from the scriptures, then that is the idea, the philosophy that I would subscribe to. But I think it's realizing on as profound a level as possible that we're all the same. We're all human beings. We all have desires and wishes and hopes and wants. We all want security. We all want love. We just happen to be packaged in different ways. But fundamentally, we all have a beating heart. And that underpins my attitude to life. And it's certainly after a while, underpinned Mandela's attitude to life. And that's why he's the revered person that he became.
Craig Oliver: Let's talk about your journalism. Another quote from your book, it says, ‘I was always fascinated by going beyond my own boundaries. I'd see stories about faraway places on shows like Wicker's World, but he was a white guy with a very different accent to mine’. Then I saw Trevor McDonald. I wondered if I'd be able to do something like that.
Clive Myrie: Yeah. I mean, Trevor suggested to me that it might be possible to have a career in television. Um, not just journalism, but in television specifically, because he was, he was doing it. He led by example.
Craig Oliver: And it's worth saying to maybe some younger people listening to this. Trevor was a guy who came from Trinidad. He worked with the World Service, ITN took him on board and he became ‘the newscaster’. I worked with Trevor when my first job was as a news attend producer in the early nineties. Mm-Hmm. And Trevor was the presenter, and it's hard to get across quite how famous he was. We would be disappointed if News at 10 didn't get 14 million viewers. Which now, like the news is getting two, 3 million viewers. I mean, and he was properly and is properly famous
Clive Myrie: Yeah. I mean, but what was interesting, what, what was that like for you then, working with this black man at a time when the vast majority of people in the newsroom. All of them actually, apart from Trevor were, were white. I mean, was that, did you think, oh, this is interesting?
Craig Oliver: Definitely this is interesting because he was, he was the big man at ITN and he was famous and he was untouchable. And actually what was interesting about working with him was that technically he wasn't the best newscaster. But what he had about him was the most extraordinary warmth and personality and authority. And people loved that about him. And what I remember working with him, he's still around. I saw him the other dayand he would be in his office all day and then the bosses would go home and then he'd come out and you could see this sort of like sigh of relief that they'd all gone home and he would just like say, yeah, yeah, whatever. They said, that was all bullshit. We we're doing something different. But no, he, he was a great man, but I think what was extraordinary was that he was taken to the heart. Of the nation. And at a time where there was more overt racism, it was almost as if people were colourblind to it.
Clive Myrie: Absolutely. He connected with the audience and they trusted him. And that's what you want in a news presenter. I mean, and he was everywhere, all around the world, wasn't he? All over the place? All over the place. You know, he was reporting from America a lot. He of course, did that interview with Saddam Hussein at the beginning of the first Gulf war.
And he was in South Africa. I remember a lot. I mean, he, he came to the launch of “Everything Is Everything’, I, I mention him so many times in the bloody book. I thought I should get him over. And he's, he's a friend of mine and I love him. I love him dearly.
Craig Oliver: He was the inspiration.
Clive Myrie: Yeah.

Craig Oliver: This is part two of a conversation with the broadcaster, Clive Myrie. He tells me about what inspired him to become a journalist. What he's learned from all his experiences
Clive Myrie: Along with accountants, politicians, and, I don't know, undertakers or something, we're at the bottom of, bottom of the social pile in terms of public opinion, lawyers maybe
Craig Oliver: Estate agents
Clive Myrie: Estate agents, estate agents, and yet being a lawyer or a doctor is seen as, you know, certainly for an immigrant, you know, you've made it. And as a result for my parents to travel, they didn't travel 6,000 miles from the warmth and the sun and the beaches and, and an environment that they knew to a cold inhospitable place that had a few racists in it for their kids to grow up to be bums, I.E. journalists. That wouldn't be great.
Craig Oliver: And I think that's really interesting. In the book, you do use that idea of the sort of sliding door moment where you could've been a barrister you could've been journalists, but you also use that a lot about history. So if the slave ship had gone to America rather than the Caribbean.
Clive Myrie:Who knows?
Craig Oliver: Who knows. And that's interesting. I think reflecting on. The sheer chance of everything. Like chance, upon chance, upon chance, upon chance, results in us being here now. And coping and dealing with that.
Clive Myrie: Totally, I could have said, you know what, I'm doing law. I don't really enjoy it but in those days it was prestigious job, made good money. Wasn't just okay money, it was good money as a barrister. I mean, that's actually changed now, interestingly, but at the time I could have said, yeah, you know, what path of least resistance, rather than begin this precarious journey, tried to become uh, you know, something like my hero, Trevor McDonald or Alan Wicker. It was chancy. Absolutely. You know, I started in, I managed to get on a BBC training course, which was the first big rung on the ladder, which was fantastic. And I was in local radio. But then how do you get out of local radio? You think, God, you know, there were people around me who'd been covering local politics and social affairs and sport or whatever in the Southwest, which is where I started in the West Country, in Bristol for years and years and years, but they were happy and I knew I wouldn't have been happy if I stuck to that environment
Craig Oliver: You wanted to see the world need to get out?
Clive Myrie: Well, I, I, you know, 1989, I'm in local radio, turn on the TV and I see Kate Aidee in Tiananmen Square, and I'm thinking that's where I wanna be.
Craig Oliver: I remember when I was thinking about being a journalist and the guy said, look, the money's good, but you're never gonna be rich. But what you have the prospect of is having a front row seat of history and at that point I went, I’m in.
Clive Myrie: And seeing theseeing the world. That was the other thing, you know, like Alan Wicker a man I never got to meet, sadly, you know, I wanted to sort of do all these things. He was a window for me as a kid, and Trevor and the newspapers that I, you know, delivered on my paper round, they were all portals to another world beyond the Bolton, beyond this slightly gray mill town..that I loved, but there was a clearly a whole world out there. What's going on? What's happening in Japan, in America? Yeah, I'm hearing all this stuff, blah, blah, blah, blah. And, and journalism allowed me to do that in a way that the law wouldn't have done.
Craig Oliver:And it sounds like you've got a huge sense of responsibility about journalism. You say, ‘this is no joke, I'm not just going to these places to have fun. I'm trying to tell the story of the situation that I am in and get across the feelings of the people I'm talking to that could encourage a viewer to put an extra 20 p in the Oxfam box or help change government policy.’
Clive Myrie: Absolutely. I'm not conceited, I hope enough to think that, you know, I can change things, but if you can affect one mind or have you know, one person think differently about something that perhaps they hadn't thought of, then that's, that's a result.
I think, and as a result, you know, I do feel we as journalists have a responsibility to get out there what, what some people don't want to get out there. And, uh, you know, the post office scandal that we're in the middle of is a classic example of that. It really is.
Craig Oliver: And you begin the book interestingly, like with you visiting a leper colony. In Japan, which I think people would've been surprised that, what is it, 25, 30 years ago, whenever it was. That there still was such a thing. And then you conclude the book with this sentiment, ‘this is the question I've asked myself throughout my journalism and throughout this book, why different societies or groups are unwilling to live and let live. Why they would rather destroy if I have learned anything. It is that we all have the capacity for empathy, but it takes courage and wisdom and humility. Find the goodness in this all.’
That question about why people, why, that's a huge question. It's, it's massive. Have you got anywhere to answer it?
Clive Myrie: I dunno. I think there is an elevation that an individual has in who they are. They're lifted up potentially by putting others down. I think that is a big part of it. I think a sense of self and importance and value can be gained from seeing others being beneath you. I think that is a big part of where antipathy to other people comes from.
I think there's also a level of resentment at the success of others who don't look like you. How come they've got that? How come they're doing so good? I relate that possibility to the Dayaks and the Madurese in Borneo.
Craig Oliver: It's interesting 'cause that was gonna be my next question 'cause big section of the book is in Borneo. Where literally people are going round beheading people. So there's what you are saying about, you know, I can subjugate you or push you down because you are not like me. And then there is literally one of the most extreme acts of violence that you could possibly perpetrate on another human being. And it seems to me again, that this is coming back to the theme Ubuntu, the inability to see another person as a human being. If you can actually get to the stage of beheading somebody, you can't possibly think that that's a human being with thoughts and hopes and feelings.
Clive Myrie: But it's not just beheading somebody, Craig. It's shelling a tower block full of women and children, and I relate this in the book. I'm in Ukraine. I'm talking to a cameraman who's married to a Russian woman. Their kids are fluent Russian speakers. They go back to Moscow to see the in-laws. He goes back to see the in-laws regularly. I. And he understands that the attitude of some Russians to Ukraine is that they are subspecies. They're not equal travelers on this earth to Russians, and that mentality means that you can shell an apartment block with women and children. You can bomb hospitals, you can bomb parks where kids are playing. It's not a problem. Just press the button and it's go. And it's because that sense that you do not understand fully that we're all warmed by the same summers. It means that you can behave like that. And that's certainly the case with the Dayaks and the Madurese.
Craig Oliver: And I think that when you are in, in the chapter in Borneo, you talk about the tragedy of it all, but I also think you are pretty honest in that it can be very exciting as well. And that when you're a journalist, that actually one of the things that attracts a lot of people to being a foreign correspondent and covering these things is the excitement and the glory. And that you, but I think you highlight, I'm not suggesting that that's you. But there is a tension there, isn't there?
Clive Myrie: There are totally a tension. I'm not sure about glory glory part of it. I don't…
Craig Oliver: I know a lot of foreign correspondents and I would say you may be a honorable exception but there are quite a, a few of them,.that love the fact that they are the centre I feel able to say that to you, but there is definitely a kind of type of foreign correspondents that I think is lessening now, but was very much gung-ho macho, telling people, you know, I'm coming here and telling you what's what.
Clive Myrie: I’m Genuinely not just saying this. I don't think that was ever part of my motivation. I love the excitement, you know, God, I've never been to Borneo before. I am driving around this, this tiny little town called Sampit. There are headless bodies piled up everywhere. That is an experience that is horrifying, but at the same time, wow, I'm seeing this in front of my eyes. This is just astonishing and there is. Excitement's not the wrong word. It's just sort of experiencing something so out of the ordinary that very few people experience that does give you a kick.
Craig Oliver: I imagine you feel a lot, no question that you're very much plugged into the world and seeing it. It its most you feel plugged into the world.
Clive Myrie: Yes. So you make you feel, I suppose in a way it might make you feel alive. I'm not sure. I just think it's just exciting. This is not a nine to five job type thing. I mean, on a very extreme level.
Craig Oliver: And seeing those piles of headless bodies, you, you say you are not sure if you've had PTSD. Yeah. But it must have impacted you.
Clive Myrie: Um, yeah. I mean, you know, those images will come back every now and again and you will think, oh my God, that was awful. That was awful. And I think as you get older, you are thinking more about those individual bodies. You are thinking about their names and who they were or what happened to them and and, and the lives that they had. And, and that whole backstory is there.
Craig Oliver: And going back to ‘Everything is Everything’, it'll all be okay. It wasn't for those people.
Clive Myrie: No, it wasn't. And that is, is something that you, you have to live with. You have to, to sort of deal with. And indeed, on that very trip, there was a woman that I came across that she had lost everybody. Husband, children, grandparents, uncles, aunties, whole family wiped up. And she was completely on her own, heavily pregnant, heavily pregnant. And I just kept thinking about her. And the baby inside her and what the future held for them. And I think part of the thing about not thinking hugely about the dead bodies is that they're sort of, they're dead.
I mean, you know, their pain is over. I mean, that's, that's it. They are people who are no longer having to deal with some of the problems that those people who are alive are having to deal with. So my sense of,’ Oh my God, this is awful,’ is more likely to be reserved for those people who are still living through the trauma. And that was this woman that I came across. You know, how is that child gonna be brought up? What is the psychological scar on the mind of this woman as a result of everything she's been through? That's where the real sense of, I mean, God. Oh, a dead body. That's awful. And you hope that it wasn't painful. You hope that what they went through was somehow their pain ended quickly, but they're dead. My sense of pain as a journalist, as an onlooker comes for those people who are still living that trauma. I.
Craig Oliver: I want to talk a bit about Iraq because that is a story that loomed very large, I think, in both, or has loomed very large in both our journalistic careers. You were there at the invasion point. And I think you, you talk and write about, say that you had to write a letter to your family.
Clive Myrie: It's funny, I didn't write the letter. I thought about it and I was told it might be a good idea. And the idea is that you write a letter that will be opened by your family in the event of your death. And I thought I might be tempting fate here. I thought about what I put in it.
Craig Oliver: What did you think about putting it?
Clive Myrie:I would go, I hope that you enjoyed our life together as much as I did. I believe you did. And I'm so sorry that I'm not there to continue sharing this life that we had together, something along those lines. A sort of apology that I put myself in this situation by accepting Malcolm Downing, the foreign editor's invitation to be embedded with, um, with the Royal Marines. So perhaps a bit of an apology, but also a reflection of the idea that I probably wouldn't have wanted to go any other way, I was doing something that I loved, which was dying with your boots on. Um, well, you know, and Journalism. In a foreign place that I'd never experienced before. This embodied everything that I wanted journalism to be about.
Craig Oliver: So I was in Iraq on the fourth anniversary of that invasion, and that four-year period later, it was the peak of the violence.
I mean, basically the country was in complete turmoil. They were, you know. Gangs running around, kidnapping, murdering, killing it. It was a nightmarish scenario. And I was the editor of the 10 o'clock news and we went and presented the program from there and covered it from there. And one of the things we did when we were in Basra was we were talking to, did a report on some of the young squadies, the 19 year olds, that kind of thing.
And one of them died, was killed. And I remember having been there and just thinking, what was the point of that? Because, it was so clear that we'd at least created as many problems as we'd solved by going in there, and it was absolutely crystal clear to me that so many things that we had done had been a mistake.
But being a BBC person, you had to be impartial and you had to like be balanced. I'm interested in you talking a bit about that because when you read ‘Everything is Everything’, it's clear you have some pretty strong opinions on some things. But you work for an organization which demands impartiality. I'm just interested in you reflecting on that.
Clive Myrie:. Well you see that, but that's really interesting what you, what you had just said there, Craig, about it was clear to you that this was all a big old mistake and it was clear to the world, it was clear to everybody four years later, I suppose the difficulty was at the point of invasion, would it have been as clear then and it clearly to Cheney and to Tony Blair?
Craig Oliver: There were a lot of people saying it was a mistake?
Clive Myrie: Yeah, absolutely. There were a lot of people who gave counsel to those leaders who felt it was a good idea and said they didn't think it was a good idea. That's true.
Craig Oliver: But you see the bigger point I'm making here does, I mean, forget Iraq. It seems to me that you are somebody who has strong opinions, so that's great. And you come to conclusions about things. But you work for an organization that wants you to be impartial, even-handed, right? That your views should not be clear right now.
Clive Myrie: I think there's a fundamental flaw in what you've just said. The BBC wants me to be fair. I don't like the word impartial because that can suggest, I'm not saying this is what you were suggesting, but it can suggest fifty-fifty, on the one hand or the other. That's wishy-washy. That doesn't get across the complexity of any issue. It's just, you know, well…. it's like when you see Vox pops, I don't think you like Vox Pops, if I remember right?
Craig Oliver: No, I banned them.
Clive Myrie: It's like, you know, we ask one person, then we ask somebody else and it's like, what's the point?
Craig Oliver: Who are these random people?
Clive Myrie: What's the point? And you know. It's good getting an idea of what the public think about it, but in any given circumstance, but you know, nine times out of 10 you've got to have balance, one has to have balance. So you'll get someone, you'll get 20 people who say, I think this is appalling. You're hoping for one person to say, I think it's brilliant, and then you've got the balance, and then you put the two of them on air and it's like, well, no…
Craig Oliver: I'm pushing you on this because, but like, so you say about being fair. Nobody thinks they're not fair. Nigel Farage thinks he's fair. You know, Jeremy Corbyn thinks he's fair. You know, there are lots of people who say that they've come to the conclusion that they are fair. There is a difference between that. And I am deliberately giving. The other side equal billing or finding the balance of the argument here at least.
Clive Myrie: Well, first of all, it's due impartiality. Which you know all about. So if ninety-nine percent of eminent scientists around the world say, climate change is man-made, why am I putting on the 1% on air? Why?
Craig Oliver: So that's good. You've using the extreme example so that, but ba let me just take something like, okay. We are recording this of the day after the Iowa caucuses.Trump barnstormed his way to victory. Like a huge thing here is a man that has, let's just say has not been great for race relations in America. Are you saying that you would feel able to be fair saying, look, this guy's a nightmare. He, he's clearly not a good thing.
Clive Myrie: Yes. If it's based on fact. So you find the comments that he's made about ‘Mexicans all being rapists. We don't take in the best of their, like we take in the worst of their, like they're rapists, they're murderers,’...he said all that. Mm-Hmm. What's really interesting is that I think there are lots of people in the BBC who I think have in their mind, what you've sort of enunciated, which is that it's really difficult to say anything. I think you can say a hell of a lot as long as it's based. In fact, I've just written two articles both for the Guardian. One was on migration, migration! A BBC presenter right for the Guardian on migration. The second one was on the Israel Hamas War. I mean, you couldn't get two more incendiary topics than that, that a frontline BBC presenter is writing about in the Guardian.
Wrote the articles, sent them to Kevin Silverton, brilliant man in editorial policy. Couple of tweaks, boom, they're published because what I was saying was based in fact, I could easily say that Donald Trump has issues with race. As long as I quote what he said, that is the key.
Craig Oliver: Could you say it's a bad thing that he might be re-elected?
Clive Myrie: No, because it might be a good thing that he's re-elected for some people. That is pure opinion and it's not, I think an idea that I hold in my head that I can make public 'cause it's based in fact. You may wanna cut this out. I, but I love the line. Opinions are like assholes.
Craig Oliver: Everybody’s got one. I went and worked for NBC for a bit when I was, when I was younger and, and I, my reason I didn't like box pops was that they called them Triple A, which was Ask Any Asshole. And it was just like, anyway, I wanted to just, we're coming towards the end and I just wanted to ask a couple of things. It's like you've been around as a journalist for a long time, like since I'm, you know, in my mid-fifties. You're slightly older, you've been around for a long time and you are now doing amazing things like Mastermind, you're doing travel shows. There's also loads of speculation that you might be, be the BBC's lead news presenter, that kind of thing. How is it dealing with all of that?
Clive Myrie: A piece of cake. Because I'm almost 60. If all this was happening when I was in my thirties, and you know, yeah. I love being gung-ho and going off to war zones and all that kind of stuff. That sort of youthful enthusiasm. Maybe I would allow it all to go to my head. I'm very lucky. I. Things have have happened over the last few years that have been great and enjoyable, but I certainly don't think I'm God's gift to anything.
Craig Oliver: But I do think it's an extraordinary achievement to be considered the face of BBC news. There's still in this country a big thing to be that.
Clive Myrie: I suppose. Yeah. You know, I'm one of a team. There's no question about that. And the bottom line is I'm doing something that I enjoy. And as I say, I think because this has all sort of happened in the last sort of 10, 15 years as I've got older, for me it's the perfect time for this to happen.
And I think it might have been more problematic if I'd suddenly shot to fame and also, and it's often the case with people who shoot to fame, they, the foundations aren't necessarily there. They may be picked up because they did something amazing on some particular story that all of a sudden whoosh. And then you don't hear from 'em again,
Craig Oliver: And then you are taking it in your stride. And congratulations on it. I mean, this is a massively crunching gear change, but it is because you talked about, you know, approaching 60 and in your book you talk about approaching 60 and how you can't not think about death in that context. And you do it also in the context of having seen a lot of death. It does become more defining as you get older there. It becomes more of like something that's going to happen and that kind of thing. How are you, um, coping with all of that side of things? Because you'd had some, an illness as well gave you a shock.
Clive Myrie: Yeah, yeah. I had, uh, I had a tumor behind my, uh, left ear, which was benign. Thankfully, I'm sorry I didn't have chemo or anything, but I just had it cut out. I mean, you know, you might know this, although you are younger than me. Every little sort of kink or little bit of pain here or there, you sort of, you think more about, it's more in your mind.
I think as you get older and you know, you don't wanna leave this life behind because it's been a good life and you don't want to leave loved ones and you start, well, I've started to sort of think about what it's gonna be like for them. If I'm not here, I mean, I won't be able to think about it because I'll be dead, but the idea of not being part of this life, on a number of levels is, is sobering.
Craig Oliver: You surely take comfort in the fact that you've left this incredibly full?
Clive Myrie: Yeah, I've done what I've wanted to do. Yeah, absolutely. So, so that is, that is comforting. Without question, I don't feel that there's anything that I've wanted to do that I've particularly not been able to do. So I…it feels like a life that's been fulfilling and has fulfilled me. But of course, you want that fulfillment to continue. So the idea now that at some point it is gonna end, which of course has been the case from the moment I was born. But now as you get closer to that end of the spectrum, it's, you know, it's sobering.
Craig Oliver: It's hard to let go.
Clive Myrie: Yeah. Yeah, but you know, you've got to, you know, you've got to,
Craig Oliver: And the one question we always ask at the end, the conversation is, if there was one piece of wisdom that you'd pass on from all the experiences you've had and all you've learned, if there was one piece of advice or wisdom that you'd give to people, what would it be?
Clive Myrie: I think it picks up on what, what we've just been talking about. Take your time. Take your time. Everything is everything. It will come. And while I may have seen in my twenties, early thirties, other people sort of shoot up ahead of me. It will come.
Craig Oliver: I get asked a lot by younger people in the business. I mean, what advice. I often say to them that you've got more time than you think. People think, oh my God, unless I've achieved this, now I've gotta grab this and I've gotta do this. But actually take, take your time. You have got more time than you think. But I think that the other part of that, the other side of that coin is if you're trying to force something, I sort of look at myself as a younger person and sometimes I try to force something, you know, like. Get this job now and do it. And actually when you are trying to force something, when it's not ready is not…
Clive Myrie: It's tempting though, isn't it? But you know, you see other people around you who are doing whatever it is you want to do, but you can't quite get there. And you also worry that your opportunity might not come again.
It might not ever come. So you are, you are jumping at things and yeah, you do have more time. The new thing and it's, it's so much better to sort of build something with solid foundations rather than be a firework, be a firework light up the sky and then disappear. What's the point of that? Really?
Craig Oliver: That's a good point to end it. You're going off to the Caribbean, I think Caribbean.
Clive Myrie: Yeah. Yeah. Just finished some filming in Cuba on this travel series that I'm doing. Clive Myer is Caribbean Adventure, BBC two, and iPlayer at some point.
Craig Oliver: And I'm sure you must be asked this a million times and I can't believe I've not picked it up in the research. What would your specialist subject be on Mastermind?
Clive Myrie: Oh, I've no idea. I've absolutely not idea.
Craig Oliver: Come on, you've gotta pick something.
Clive Myrie: I mean, you know Man City, the glory years, the American presidency. There are lots of things I'm interested in. I mean, a classic, typical, and this is the answer that I, that I do tend to get.
Craig Oliver:Man City's a good example of. It will come, you've been supporting them for years.
Clive Myrie: Since before the money came, man, let me tell you, six or seven gonna Burndom Park where United and seeing the others where they played against United, all Wanderers and seeing United sort of rise, rise, arise, and thinking, well, you know, good for them. But I'm a blue. I'm a blue.
Craig Oliver: That was perfect. Thank you very much. No problem. Brilliant.
Clive Myrie: Thank you.