Clive Myrie: 'I received death threats' (2024)

BBC newsreader Clive Myrie reveals today how he received a death threat from a man with a history of gun offences.

The broadcaster, who will co-host the BBC's election night coverage, tells today's Desert Island Discs how he was terrorised by a man who even taunted him about the kind of bullets he would use.

Myrie, 59, said: 'One chap issued death threats and he was tracked down and prosecuted. And 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 presenter added that he initially tried to dismiss the threats as 'showboating and bravado' but he was left seriously shaken when he found out just how credible they were.

He said: 'They tracked down this character and it turned out that he had previous convictions for firearms offences. So you thought, "My God, what, if anything, might this person have been planning?"

Myrie, who was born near Bolton to Jamaican immigrant parents, also spoke about the racism he and other presenters have experienced at the hands of viewers.

He said: 'You would get the odd comment on email and stuff. "People like you shouldn't be on our TV." "You dress like a pimp," one person suggested.

'And cards in the post with gorillas on. There was a period actually in the Nineties when a number of reporters who were of colour would get faeces in the post.'

Myrie – who presents Mastermind as well as travel documentaries – said he had learnt to live with the abuse, which increased as his profile rose. 'It's par for the course,' he added. 'It used to wind me up but now I have just have unbridled pity for these losers. This thing has sort of picked up more since I've become a presenter and maybe a little more visible.'

The broadcaster also spoke movingly about how two of his half-brothers had been affected by the Windrush scandal.

Dozens of people who had arrived from the Caribbean decades earlier were deported or threatened with deportation because the Home Office had destroyed files that proved their legal right to remain.

Fighting back tears, Myrie told the programme that his brother Lionel had been vindicated but Peter had died before he could see justice done.

He added: 'There was a certain amount of restitution. Lionel now has the right to remain here but Peter died before he got his stuff and it's just dreadful.

'He wanted to take his daughter Maisie to Jamaica so that she could see her parents' homeland. He couldn't do that. He died of prostate cancer.

'And there are still people who haven't received their compensation. It's just very, very sad.'

Myrie also spoke about how he reported the scandal in the light of his family's experiences.

He said: 'You're professional. You don't talk specifically about your own personal link to the story but you show a level of incredulity and a level of sadness that this could happen.'

He added that he learnt of the racism experienced by his parents after their arrival from Jamaica.

'It clearly was a difficult time for them on occasion,' he said. 'I don't recall them ever going to the pub or ever going to a restaurant.

'I think they just wanted to keep themselves to themselves and that might have been to do with wanting to avoid any confrontations that could have happened. I suppose they just felt safe within the confines of their own home.'

Myrie's mother, who had taught at a Roman Catholic school in Jamaica, was told she could not attend the Catholic church half a mile away from her home in Bolton because she didn't live in the correct diocese. She assumed the priest was telling her the truth and instead worshipped at a local Church of England church.

Myrie said: 'To this day, she [my mother] would never suggest that this was racism… It feels to me as if he decided that my mother being a woman from the Caribbean and being black shouldn't be in his church. That is what it feels to me.'

Desert Island Discs is on BBC Radio 4 today at 10am and is available via BBC Sounds.