Clive Myrie: ‘There were few Black people when I joined the BBC, but I never doubted myself'

Telegraph

05-07-2025

How do famous names spend their precious downtime? In our weekly My Saturday column, celebrities reveal their weekend virtues and vices. This week: Clive Myrie
6.30am
I wake up on Saturday the same time I wake up on most other days. I'll get the main headlines and the sport from the Today programme but, with the state of the world at the moment, my wife Catherine isn't into listening to doom, so we flick over to Radio 3. Then I look at the headlines on my phone, but it could well be that I know more about the main story of the day than what I'm reading anyway. I'm an old bloke, so it's very much legacy media. I'm not looking for news on X or Instagram because I worry I might be reading anything.
8am
I'm not one of these people who springs out of bed. I need time to adjust to my new state of being, as it were. Then, as it's the weekend, I go out and buy a hard-copy newspaper.
8.30am
Breakfast is cereal for me and maybe croissants for Catherine. Then I start catching up on my emails and correspondence. It takes three hours or so. Seriously. But Saturday is the only time I have to respond to these. It has become a bit of a routine.
12pm
I head out to the shops again. If we're not planning to go out for dinner that evening then I will buy ingredients for cooking. Plus, flowers for the house and some wine – usually white, like a Picpoul, a Sancerre or a Vouvray. Catherine tells me what food to buy, so I'm just the grocery guy. She is good at cooking stews or a nice flaky, white fish. In summer, maybe a halloumi salad. But I might buy something rogue too: something suitably Seventies, like a sherry trifle.
I also visit a couple of vinyl-record stores. I listen to tons of music through Spotify but if I buy music, it's got to be vinyl. And the focus is always on jazz. I like classic hard bop and stuff from the Blue Note label. And more modern stuff like Ezra Collective, Steve Williamson, Omar [Lye-Fook], Tomorrow's Warriors and Nubya Garcia.
1pm
Catherine and I will often go to an art exhibition and have lunch at the gallery. We like modernist art and post-War, mainly painting. At the beginning of the year I make a list of exhibitions I want to see, but I often end up missing them because I'm working in some godforsaken hell-hole somewhere. The last exhibition we saw was Tirzah Garwood, the wife of Eric Ravilious, at Dulwich Picture Gallery. There's also a great exhibition I want to see at October Gallery [in Bloomsbury] of a Guyanese artist called Aubrey Williams. We're lucky to own a few bits and pieces of his.
4pm
During the afternoon I listen to Gilles Peterson's radio show on BBC Radio 6 Music. He plays jazz, soul, funk, broken beat, rap. I love most jazz genres but, if push came to shove, I'd choose stalwarts such as Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and John Coltrane.
My latest radio programme [on BBC Sounds and starting on BBC Radio 2 at midnight on July 5] is called Clive Myrie's Kings of Jazz. It's all about the titans in the genre, such as Ray Charles, Nat King Cole and Louis Armstrong.
If I was a contestant on Mastermind [rather than the presenter], maybe jazz would be my specialist subject.
5pm
I will also tune into the football scores during the afternoon, scanning for my beloved Man City. I don't listen continuously to match commentary because I'm convinced if I do I'll jinx the score, so I dip in and out. I've supported Man City since before the money came – [I've been] through thick and thin with that bloody club; I'm not one of these fly-by-nights. I do try to see them when they play a London club, but I don't get up to the Etihad Stadium as much as I'd like to. If they lose, for the rest of the Saturday I'm in a bad mood. All the players are amazing but I have a soft spot for Phil Foden. 'The Stockport Iniesta' we call him. I've never met him, sadly.
I grew up in Bolton. Lancashire is a wonderful spot but my mum and dad both moved to the Midlands after they got divorced, to be near my sisters, so I don't have that much of a connection to Lancashire anymore – apart from being Pro Chancellor at Bolton University.
I used to think 'boys from Bolton don't work at the BBC '. I joined the BBC when there were very few Black people, and very few people who sounded like me. You've got to have a sense of self. You've got to understand what you're capable of and what you can contribute, and realise that, a lot of the time, you're as good as anybody else. The fact that you might not be the member of the latest club doesn't mean anything: it's the work that you're doing. And if you can do the work as well as anybody else, that's what matters. If you're not from the right milieu, then you start to doubt yourself. But I didn't doubt myself. Impostor syndrome I don't have.
6pm
Mum and dad might get a phone call. My mum's 90 this year, my dad's just turned 96. I call them on Sundays as well because I know they'll be in and not out partying and painting Derbyshire red.
7pm
If we've decided to stay in, Catherine will do the cooking. We'll switch from Radio 6 Music to Radio 3, as they would usually have an opera on.
But if we go out, we might go to the opera or the cinema. When it comes to films, I'm no superhero fan. Nothing from Marvel, thank you very much. I love Wes Anderson, and any heavy-duty drama: a proper movie that's going to make you think. We often go to The Screen on the Green in Islington.
Being on TV so much, I often get asked to do selfies – 9.99 times out of 10, people approach you because they like what you do, and I appreciate that. Because of the travel shows I make, people tell me they went to a certain place because I went there. Some people have tried to stay in the same hotel rooms I've stayed in, which is a bit weird.
10.30pm
If Man City have won, I'll watch Match of the Day, but not if they've lost. Then straight to bed. I don't tend to read in bed except to catch up on a long-running news story. I don't actually read that much fiction. I prefer biographies and history books.
I tend to sleep pretty soundly.