BBC News anchor Clive Myrie has revealed he’s been subjected to racist abuse and death threats throughout his career on camera.
Clive has now been part of the national broadcaster for almost 40 years, joining the corporation’s on-air news team in 2009.
During an interview on Desert Island Discs released over the weekend, he reflected on his broadcasting career, and revealed the extent of the abuse he’s received.
As well as being sent excrement and “cards in the post with gorillas on”, Clive disclosed one credible death threat for which a man was “tracked down and prosecuted”.
“His death threats involved talking about the kind of bullet that he’d use in the gun to kill me and this kind of stuff,” the newscaster explained.
“I was shaken for a while after I’d been told. I thought, ‘it’s just someone showboating. It’s just bravado’. And then they tracked down this character, and it turned out that he had previous convictions for firearms offences.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Clive spoke of his hopes earlier on in his career that he would not be reduced to being “seen as a Black journalist” by his employers.
“I wanted to be a journalist who just happens to be Black,” he explained. “I didn’t want the BBC to fall into lazy thinking, which was so easy at the time.
“Notting Hill Carnival – send the black guy. Riot out on the street in some inner city area – send the black guy. I didn’t want that. I didn’t want my colour to define who I am, and the BBC understood that.”
Clive is perhaps most renowned among BBC viewers for his work reporting from war zones, including a memorable broadcast from Kyiv in 2022.
Next month, he’s due to lead the BBC’s coverage of the general election, taking over from Huw Edwards, who stepped down from the corporation in April a year after announcing a work hiatus following a much-publicised scandal.
As well as his work with BBC News, Clive also presents Mastermind and his own travelogue series.