Veteran broadcaster Clive Myrie tells Jonathan Wright how his research into his family history has shaped his new TV series
When the BBC gave Clive Myrie the green light, he was surprised. Having been asked to come up with ideas for another travel series to follow in the footsteps of last year’s Clive Myrie’s Italian Road Trip, the journalist, newsreader and host of the legendary quiz show Mastermind put forward a number of suggestions. The Caribbean was “pretty near the bottom of the list”, if only because of the unavoidable expense.
Instead, he reveals, “The BBC said, ‘We want you to go the Caribbean, there is no question about it, but we’ll give you the same budget as you had for Italy.’ ” At which point Myrie, speaking from his home in North London, starts laughing. While he got to visit some idyllic places, the costs meant his filming schedule was demanding.
Nevertheless, you can understand Auntie’s enthusiasm for the project. Exploring the very different nations of Barbados, Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica, Clive Myrie’s Caribbean Adventurecontains 15 episodes each lasting 30 minutes, and reflects his professional skills as a senior news journalist and foreign correspondent. It offers a mix of travelogue and reportage, while also rooting the programme in Myrie’s more personal reflections about his own family history and what it means to be a black Briton.
Although he was born and raised in Bolton, Greater Manchester, Myrie’s life has been profoundly shaped by familial connections stretching across the Atlantic. His mother and father Lynne and Norris, people he vividly sketches in his recent book Everything Is Everything: A Memoir of Love, Hate and Hope(Hodder & Stoughton, 2023), were from Westmoreland, Jamaica’s westernmost parish.
THE WINDRUSH EXPERIENCE
Like so many countless other members of the Windrush Generation, Lynne and Norris left Jamaica in the early 1960s in search of work opportunities. Norris was encouraged to move to the UK by his brother Cecil, who had already settled here after finishing military service with the Royal Air Force in the Second World War – one of a number of Caribbean men who followed this path. Going further back, Myrie’s great uncle William Runners served on the Western Front in the First World War.
“[Cecil] fell in love and moved to Bolton,” explains Myrie, “and that’s why my mum and dad ended up there. After the war, of course, you had
