EXCLUSIVE
As he joins Saga Magazine as a columnist, one of the country’s leading broadcasters, Sir Trevor McDonald, tells us about his extraordinary life, from humble beginnings in Trinidad to interviewing state leaders
Recently, Sir Trevor McDonald attended a function at Buckingham Palace where he had a chat with the King. ‘He said, “How old are you?”’ Sir Trevor recalls with a broad grin. ‘What a cheeky question! Well, I think he meant to say, “You look great”,’ Sir Trevor explains, appearing a little embarrassed. ‘Anyway, I replied, “Much older than you, sir!”’
If the King had said Sir Trevor looked great, he would have been quite right. At 84, the veteran newscaster – regularly voted the most trusted on British television – couldn’t be on finer form. A regular tennis player (‘though after a couple of hours my back aches’), he is impressively trim in a suit and pinstripe shirt (but no tie), although he’s bereft of his trademark black-rimmed specs.
‘I had cataract surgery two years ago, so now I only need glasses for reading and it’s lovely,’ he explains, in that so-familiar voice, sipping a chilled glass of Chardonnay in a pub near his flat in Barnes, southwest London. ‘I have to be careful about my footing these days, but everything on television that used to be a dull red now glows crimson – it’s so clear.’
Even sharper is Sir Trevor’s memory, packed as it is with vignettes of his ‘front-row seats at some of the biggest international political events of my time’.
The former presenter of ITV’s News at Ten on and off for 16 years, as well as the host of Tonight With Trevor McDonald from 1999 to 2007, his conversation flows seamlessly from interviewing the likes of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, to accompanying Ronald Reagan in the president’s Air Force One jet and being driven round the grounds of Sandringham by the late Prince Philip.
‘He was the business, great fun, but a bit of a wild driver. At one point the car got stuck in a pool of mud. He was wondering how we got there. I couldn’t say what I was thinking – “Well, you were the one who drove the bloody thing into the mud!”. But he was very charming, and I really liked the regard with which he was held by everyone on the estate.’ Then there were several encounters with South Africa’s late president Nelson Mandela, who gave Sir Trevor his first interview in 1990 after his release from 27 years’ imprisonment. ‘I wanted him to say something like, “I was beaten every day”, but he would never complain.’
It was only five years later when Sir Trevor interviewed him again that he unexpectedly unlo
