How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - S6, Ep6 How to Fail: George Alagiah

Episode Date: October 30, 2019

For 15 years, George Alagiah has been a familiar face on our television screens as the presenter of the BBC's Six O'Clock News. Before that, he was one of the corporation's most respected foreign correspondents. Before that, he was born in what was then Ceylon, the only boy in a family of four sisters, and was sent to boarding school in England at the age of 12.George joins me to talk about his self-perceived failures at fatherhood, the challenges of reporting from the front-line in times of humanitarian crisis, his nuanced relationship with racial identity and how he dealt with racist incidents in his youth. He also talks movingly about his bowel cancer diagnosis in 2014, which has seen him undergo over 40 rounds of chemotherapy and make his peace with death. What struck me most about George was his elegance: in person, but also in expression. He has no anger or bitterness or stored-up resentment, and this to me is the definition of a quiet sort of heroism.(Obviously I also asked him about BBC equal pay and if he'd watched Anchorman.)I loved this interview. It moved me and made me think. I hope it does the same to you. *The How To Fail Live tour is almost over. SNIFF! There are limited tickets left for Belfast with Sinead Burke (14th November) and Gateshead with Jess Phillips MP (8th December). Dublin with Amy Huberman (15th November) has SOLD OUT! Thank you! These events are not recorded as podcasts so the only way to be there is to book tickets via www.faneproductions.com/howtofail* The Sunday Times Top 5 bestselling book of the podcast, How To Fail: Everything I've Ever Learned From Things Going Wrong by Elizabeth Day, is out now and is available here.*George Alagiah's novel, The Burning Land, is out now and available here.* This season of How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted by Elizabeth Day, produced by Naomi Mantin and Chris Sharp and sponsored by Sweaty Betty. Sweaty Betty are offering listeners 20% off full-price items with the code HOWTOFAILTo contact us, email [e-mail]* Social Media:Elizabeth Day @elizabdayGeorge Alagiah @BBCAlagiahSweaty Betty @sweatybetty              Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. This season of How to Fail with Elizabeth Day is sponsored by Sweaty Betty. Sweaty Betty is a fabulous activewear brand designed by an all-female team. And you can really tell that, especially with their power leggings. I love their power leggings. They make me feel I can do anything. They sculpt,

they're squat-proof, they're high-waisted and it's a bit like wearing a second skin. Pulling on a pair of power leggings motivates me to be more active and to move, even at 7am when I really just want to crawl back into bed. I'd love for you to have the same experience as me with Sweaty Betty, and so they're offering 20% off full-price products with the code HOWTOFAIL. Thank you very much to Sweaty Betty. Hello and welcome to How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, the podcast that celebrates the things that haven't gone right. This is a podcast about learning from our mistakes and understanding that why we fail ultimately makes us stronger, because learning how to fail in life actually

means learning how to succeed better. I'm your host, author and journalist Elizabeth Day, and every week I'll be asking a new interviewee what they've learned from failure. George Alagaya is one of the most familiar faces in Britain. He has presented the BBC's six o'clock news for over 15 years, a seemingly unflappable presence on our television screens. years, a seemingly unflappable presence on our television screens. But his own life has not always been a source of calm. Alagaya was born in Sri Lanka, where political and religious unrest prompted his family to move to Ghana when he was five. Ghana was his home until the age of 11, when he was sent to boarding school in Portsmouth and later attended Durham University. when he was sent to boarding school in Portsmouth and later attended Durham University.

His broadcasting career was shaped by long stints as one of the BBC's leading foreign correspondents, reporting on the genocide in Rwanda, the civil wars in Sierra Leone and Afghanistan, and interviewing everyone from Nelson Mandela to the late Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe. More recently, he published his first novel, The Burning Land, an exhilarating political thriller set in the powder keg of contemporary South Africa. Lately, the battles have been personal rather than global. In 2014, Alagaya was diagnosed with bowel cancer. He went through 17 rounds of chemotherapy and five operations, one of which removed most of his liver, before going back to work. In December 2017, the cancer returned. Alagaya is currently

undergoing treatment. As a foreign correspondent, I saw a lot of suffering and desperation, he said in a recent interview. When I look back, I don't think about the sadness. I think about the indomitability of the human spirit. At the worst of all possible times, people somehow manage to lift themselves up and they carry on. A lesson I will never forget. George Alagaya, welcome to How to Fail. Thank you very much. I thought that was such a beautiful quote to end the introduction on because it expresses so much of what this podcast is about. And I imagine so much of what you're currently going through. Well, it's interesting because people

often assume that because I've seen life at its worst, you know, whether it was the Afghan Civil War, which you mentioned, or the Rwandan genocide and its aftermath, that somehow I must be very pessimistic. And actually, I'm exactly the opposite. I'm an optimist, largely because I've seen that kind of human spirit in places that you would least expect it. I mean, the dignity with which some people carry themselves in situations that you and I, Elizabeth, just can't even begin to imagine. We don't get close. That dignity shines through. And the other question I get asked is, you know, who's the most famous person you've interviewed?

And, of course, there's, again, you mentioned Nelson Mandela and there's a few others. But actually, you know, when I think back, it isn't Mr. Mandela that sticks in my mind. There are a couple of women, actually, one in Mali and this woman in Somalia, both of whom for different reasons, for the resilience they showed, I just remember so, so well and vividly. I said there that you have an unflappable presence and you really do in person as well. You have a very calm spirit. Well, maybe I do. I mean, I don't work at it or anything like that. I know this much. I'm pretty content, strange as it may sound, more so since I was diagnosed with cancer five and a half years ago now. Cancer is a physical disease, but I think you have to deal with it as much in

your mind as anywhere else. And there are as many ways I think of dealing with cancer as there are people with it. But you certainly have to come to terms with it. And especially in my case, five and a half years ago, I was in sort your affairs out territory. I mean, the thing had gone all over the place having started my bowel. And it took me about three, probably three months, three, six months to figure out how I was going to deal with it and one of the things I did I kind of literally drew up a list of good things and bad things that had kind of happened in my life and I discovered wow you know the good things way outnumbered the bad things I'd reached what I would call a place of contentment and it's made the last five and a

half years possible I mean you mentioned 17 rounds of chem. I think I'm now in my 40s or something, you know, I'm chemo tomorrow, and various other sorts of treatments. And, you know, some of it's been tough, but I think it's just dealing with it in your mind. And the contentment, I think even before cancer, I mean, I was pretty calm. I do get excited. I do get angry at times. But in general, I don't know where I got it from. But maybe it's from my parents or something. But are you scared of death? No, I'm not, where I got it from, but maybe it's from my parents or something. Are you scared of death? No, I'm not, actually. And I find this difficult to talk to, Elizabeth, so if I stop, forgive me. Because it's quite emotional.

But I'm not for myself. That much I know, and I've had to work through it in my head. Because I'm one scan away of perhaps knowing that that thing is going to happen sooner rather than later. So I've dealt with it for myself. I do find it very, very difficult when I think of the loved ones, and in particular the woman who's loved me and who I love, you know, for the last whatever it is, since 1976, Frances. So that part of it is difficult.

And people often talk about cancer, in fact I did in the introduction, about being a battle or waging a war. As someone who has been witness to real life wars, does it feel like that to you? And for me, anyway, it isn't a battle because, you know, it's my own body that's kind of gone a bit AWOL. So who would I fight? You know, who's the enemy? People do use this martial language. And because of my profile, when I first got cancer, I had lots of letters and emails. And lots of them talked about battle and fights and quite aggressive language. And that's not how I work. I've never worked that way. I mean, I remember years and years and years ago

that I was not getting on too well in the newsroom and an old boss of mine who's left now, said, I want to see you in the newsroom ripping throat, George. And I thought, my God, what does he mean first? It's just not what I do. So no, I think for me, and maybe my doctors are battling

and I've kind of left it to them actually. I said to them, look, I will do everything I can. I'll stay fit. I'll stay hopeful. I'll do all that. But you know, you're the guys, you've got 20, 30, 40 years of experience in this stuff, you do your best. So maybe they're battling, but I don't feel I'm in a battle. You mentioned your loved ones there, which brings us on to your first failing, which you have said is fatherhood. Explain what you mean by that. Well, I mean, you know, I know we're talking about failure here. I don't think I'm a failed father. I definitely don't think that. But what has happened in the last year, I mean, last November,

I became a grandfather. I mean, it's a beautiful thing, actually, because she was born on my birthday. When's your birthday? November 22. And she was born on my birthday. When's your birthday? November 22nd. And she was born on November 22nd last year, late. It was as if Mina had waited, you know. So since then, in the last year, I've watched this, our son, Adam, our eldest, being a father and juggling around with work. I mean, at the time he had Mina, he was in quite a pressurised job in one of the world's top management consultant firms, you know, the kind that sort of leave a taxi parked outside so you can get a quick shower

and then go back into work, that kind of thing. Watching him, I had a sense of envy, I guess. I mean, in a good way. I mean, I admired him. And there's two things about it that I admired. One was that here was a young man who was clearly in that psychological space that he wanted to be very much a part of, on a day-to-day basis, of Mina's life, his little baby. And of course, he was there, as I was, for the birth of our children. But psychologically, he was in there in a way in which I wasn't. And I think that's a generational thing. I think it's a good thing Frances isn't here, actually. But she always claims that we had a conversation before Adam was born, where I said, listen, if Nelson Mandela is freed, I may not be here for Adam's birth.

I think I do remember the conversation. I can't remember quite how it ended. But anyway, she's absolutely convinced I might have been chasing Mr. Mandela on Freedom Day. But that was kind of where I was. And I think lots of people, not just in my generation, but more particularly in my craft, journalism, I think that's where we were, you know, and that's just never occurred to Adam, that somehow, he wanted to be there and work was not going to get in the way. Which brings us on to the second part of it, which is that the company he was working for, he was working in Denmark at the time, gave very generous parental leave. I mean, huge amounts of time on very good money, which is what he was earning.

And that wasn't there 32 years ago when Francis and I became parents. I can remember phoning my editor. I wasn't at the BBC then, you know, and saying about to have a baby. Can I take some time off sort of thing? And then he said, yeah, yeah, yeah, do take some time. But you are still going to Mozambique, aren't you? And I can't remember exactly, but I think it was about three weeks after Adam was born, I was indeed in Mozambique covering the Civil War there.

So again, I sort of thought, how much is, I mean, in a good way, how much has changed? And it has made me think back to fatherhood. And I'd like to think that when I was at home, when I wasn't travelling, when I wasn't in Afghanistan or New York or Tegucigalpa or all those other places I'd been when I was at home, I was a good father. But it certainly has made me think about fatherhood and kind of wishing that I had been a greater presence more of the time with our two children. Do you regret it? Is it as strong as that? I don't think I regret it. I would, I think, if I saw something in our boys, our sons, our men, young men now, that made me think, you know, somehow they were struggling in any way emotionally or with their relationship. But Adam

has taken to fatherhood in such a natural and beautiful way. I mean, I just like watching him, you know, and occasionally our daughter-in-law, Liz, will take a little video. And the most recent one was Mina sitting on Adam's lap watching the rugby, you know, both of them with their mouths open, you know, which is what Adam used to do when he was a kid. And no, so it's beautiful. So I don't regret it because he's turned into this amazing guy who if he wasn't my son, I'd like to be his friend. He's got life in perspective. So I don't regret it in that sense.

Nothing bad has come out of it, but I'm certainly aware of it that both, as I said, through the kind of man I was, the kind of generation I was, and also institutionally in terms of parental leave and so on, that I probably wasn't as good a father to our boys as our boys are going to be to their children and have you spoken to them about that for you um no we haven't sat down and talked about it I've kind of said you know how brilliantly they're doing but no I haven't sat down so gosh if this the first time they're going to hear no, I haven't sat down. So gosh, if this is the first time they're going to hear it on this podcast. But I think it's a very beautiful and generous thing

to say. And you express it very movingly. Well, it's very real. How amazing that the world has moved on in this way. You know, we find ourselves, especially now as a nation, sort of finding all the faults in our society and this all this kind of aggression and so on and actually when you think about it there's so many ways in which life has got so much better and this is one of them parenthood it's still a very very tough gig i think being a mother and father and having to go out to work especially if you live in london and you need two incomes to make it all work. It's still tough, but the world has changed and it's more understanding of the pressures

that come with parenthood. And I'm so glad that it also understands fatherhood and that there are men, you know, men. I mean, it's not, I think had I had a different job or a different education, whatever, I definitely would have liked to have spent more time with the boys. I mean, one of the nice things, by the way,

I don't want to go on about this too long. But when I was a foreign correspondent in South Africa, and we were there for four years, the way it works, you're kind of on like a taxi rank. And, you know, the word comes, you know, somebody says go, and you've got your bag packed, and you just go. And sometimes it's for three days, sometimes it's three weeks. When Congo was falling apart, or Zaire as it was, I think I probably spent six, seven weeks. But when you came back, you kind of checked into the bureau with a call. But that was it. I was at home, you know, and we had fantastic times. I remember, you know, big garden, playing cricket on, you know, on the lawn, going to the pool, riding bikes,

all that kind of thing. So there were, it was interspersed with some really good quality time, but I wasn't there every day. Frances sounds like quite a woman. She is quite a woman. You know, and the funny thing is, I don't think, and we look back at it now and we never, we realised we never sort of sat there. And she wasn't the kind of person who said,

and again, it's a generational thing maybe, maybe we're doing it all over again and we were younger, she'd be different. But she accepted that the life we were leading came with the territory. You know, we met in university. And I always say, she claimed when she was a teenager, she always wanted to marry a journalist and have three boys. Well, she got the journalist.

She got two boys, not three. But no, she is an exceptional woman because South Africa in the 90s could be quite an isolating place. I mean, it was a great time. There were the Mandela years at a time of real optimism. But there's quite a lot of crime around. And, you know, we had electric gates. We had to inside our house.

We know security experts came and told us to put a gate between the bedrooms and the living areas and so on. So many women that I knew, partners of correspondence, and most of them were males, men, did retreat. And Frances never allowed that to happen. She went away with the boys. She bought herself a very old and unattractive car. And I remember my cameraman at the bureau saying, well, definitely nobody's going to go for that car. And she moved around, you know, and had a good time. So she is an exceptional exceptional woman and my sense of it is that the boys are very comfortable in themselves and in their own skins and most of that

is down to Frances because she was the person who was there day in day out and it's not easy for kids to see their dads you know disappear and kind of not know when they're going to come back obviously we didn't say daddy's going to the war zone or something, but they always had Francis. And you mentioned there those stints where you had to go aboard for six or seven weeks, often to cover really brutal conflicts, which brings us on to the second failure, as it were, that you would like to discuss,

which is about when you were sent to Rwanda to cover the conflict there, a brutal time. And tell us what it is about that particular time that still stays with you. What had happened was you had the genocide in Rwanda. Remember what it was. It was 100 days in which something like 800,000 to a million people were killed and not just killed, but brutally killed. And most of it, you know, hand to hand. I mean, you know, machetes coming out and that kind of thing, neighbour on neighbour, sometimes even within extended families. And what you then saw was an exodus of, again,

I think about another million people, again, in a very, very short space of time, a matter of days, into what was then neighbouring Zaire. I got to Zaire to cover that exodus. And what happened was that within days, cholera just ran through this. There weren't even refugee camps. There were just spaces. I remember you'd wake up in the morning and there were a few sort of tracks

in what was this camp. And you'd just wake up and there'd be corpses, bodies rolled up in straw mats, just lining, waiting for the, I'm sorry to say this, for the dump truck to come and pick it up. It was a really difficult situation. They were, in that sense, victims. And the aid agencies, Médecins Sans Frontières, all the big aid agencies were there trying to deal with the cholera and just dealing with the physical business of how do you house, home, feed and water all these people. So it was, in that sense, a refugee crisis. And my failure, as I see it, is this, that I think, not very often and not every day,

but in my reporting from this town of Goma, I will have given the impression that what we were looking at, what people were seeing on their screens during that time, were victims and perhaps, in quote marks, innocent victims, because that's how I portrayed them. I portrayed them as a group of people who needed to be fed, who needed to be watered. And oh, my God, on top of that, they've got disease to contend with. who needed to be watered. And oh my God, on top of that, they've got disease to contend with. When in fact, the truth was that, and who knows how many, but quite a few of them were involved in the genocide, had committed crimes, and some of them were crimes of omission. They didn't stop a genocide. Now, I say it was a failure. I looked back because it troubled me so much. So when I wrote my first book, A Passage to Africa, I went back and did find my scripts and my notebooks. And there was certainly one report, and I think there were others, but certainly one script that I found in which I said,

this is a problem waiting to happen. This is an army in exile. This is a people in exile, and these are politicians in exile, and they will cause trouble, which is exactly what happened. Of course, we had 20 years more of conflict or if not more. So I kind of got it and there's a proof of it. But television is both powerful, but it's also crude. And I think that's where my failure was. I didn't understand completely the power of the pictures, that as people absorb those pictures, they will have absorbed the victimhood and perhaps I should have done more more often to say hang on a minute guys you know we need to do you know

the aid agencies do need to keep these people alive but let's remember that some of these people did some very very bad things so it's a kind of failure I mean I have admitted it i think certainly in my book and other places but it was a salutary kind of lesson for me especially on a kind of day-to-day rolling basis i mean we were going to bed at like sort of two you know i can't remember that it would have been the news at nine in those days so we were probably going to bed at midnight or trying to eat something in the we're living in tents waking up at five five, six, going out doing our reporting, coming and then starting to report through the day. Very tired, but it was a lesson that with this kind of daily routine, your job as a journalist is always to keep that perspective and get the story right. And I every now and then didn't create the right picture.

How constrained are you in that situation by editorial decisions back in the studio in London, though? Because that must make it even more difficult to get nuance across. It's a really interesting point. I mean, so literally, there is no control. I mean, we're not like the Americans. And thank God, I used to sit next to American journalists, TV journalists who have to have script approval. So they would literally send their scripts and somebody sitting in kind of Chicago or Detroit or Washington or New York would sit there and amend their scripts. The BBC doesn't do that. They appoint us because we are the people who know the story better than anyone else.

So they accepted that. So in that sense, there wasn't any control. There is something else, I think, that is at work in how you report a disaster. And it's a bit like a drug, really, because what is good, quote marks, really important, good TV one day becomes kind of old TV the next day. So it's like a drug, you know, one's constantly having to find more and more examples of hardship. So if cholera is going, you know, one day you can show 10 bodies or 10 people in the clinic, the next day, you know, you're phoning the newsroom and somebody might say, yeah, it's quite similar to what we had

yesterday. Isn't there anything else? So there is this kind of requirement. It's never said. I don't think it's done in any malicious way, but there is this requirement to push the bird out, to go further and further, to find more extreme examples. And this certainly works in things like famines and so on in disaster reportings. So there is a kind of pressure. But as I say, it's not overt. It's not explicit. You can say anything you want. I mean, we're trusted as journalists. But there is this pressure, which happens to all journalists, especially in television, I think. And how do you as an individual then avoid either compassion fatigue or carrying the trauma of what you're witnessing? Or maybe you

don't? Maybe that's part of it. No, there is. In my case, it wasn't trauma, but I know plenty of people for whom it was traumatic. I mean, I certainly did my fair share with cameramen or whatever, back in that tent or a house we'd sort of found to live in where we'd shed a tear. There's no question about it. I mean, we were moved. it's impossible not to be moved in a sense i think it was a bit easier for me as a reporter because however naive one was you had this sense that you were doing some good which is kind of why i got into journalism in the first place we all think we're going to make a difference and there was something cathartic about being able to say well i've told their story and and one of

the things i'd like to think i mean there are brilliant journalists all over and a lot better than me but i'd like to think that one of the things i brought to television reporting in my period is that i hope i never ever used these people and their suffering as a kind of wallpaper as a kind of backdrop i tried as far as possible to find out people's names their ages treat them as people you know this kind of dignity that we were talking about earlier. And I always try to take their sides, which I think is okay. I know the BBC is not going to take sides. I mean, yes, not with political parties, not with politicians, not with institutions, but with people. Yes. And I did that. So that helped me, I think, deal with what I was doing. Having said that, I think there definitely came a point where I realised that I no longer could find the words

that I thought fitted what I was seeing, that I'd kind of run out of words. And I remember quite distinctly, I can't remember exactly what the story was, but the phone call came, would you like to go to wherever? And I heard myself say no before my mind had actually computed the answer it just can pop you know out it was no and I was a guy who always said yes thinking about it after

I think that was a point I'd come to understand that maybe it was time to move on and I know the other thing that was happening and this is in terms of an emotional impact this is far more important by then I was a father this is mid 90, I was a father and I found it increasingly difficult to report on disasters where kids are often, you know, the most vulnerable people suffering the most, often abandoned because of circumstance and so on. I just found that really, really difficult. I couldn't help but put Adam and Matty, my son Matthew, I sort of have visions of them in the same position and Adam having to go after math and I just didn't want to know about it. So the BBC is brilliant, you know, I mean mean it wasn't a crisis or anything I just

said look I think it's time for me to come back home and I did and I got into presenting and kind of did my journalism in a different way. Was that a relief to be behind the desk on the BBC News? No because I found it very scary if I'm honest I don't actually like standing in front of a camera that much. I mean, I like reporting. I like telling a story. I like communication. But that whole business of sitting in front of a camera, it's not something that, well, it's farthest to judge

whether I'm any good at it or not. But it's not what I wanted to be. I mean, I get letters from people saying, how do I become a presenter? Well, I didn't set out to become a presenter. I set out to be a reporter. And if I'm honest, that's probably the thing I'm proudest of. I can't do it anymore because I'm just not with the cancer and so on.

I'm just not fit enough to do those things, especially the places that I used to go, because I was always more intrigued by the back street than the main street, you know, what was going on. And you need to be fit and healthy to do that kind of thing. Of all the places you've been, do any of them resurface in your dreams? No, I don't think they do. Vulnerability is something I'm very aware of. I don't know about dreaming, but it's something that really gets to me to see powerlessness. And you know, my book, The Burning Land is about people trying to resist as best they can what the powerful are doing to them in this case

in in my book it's about land which is in so many societies the most precious thing people have i mean here we know we've got mortgages and it's very transactional but all over the world you know people see it as a birthright so whatever form it takes that kind of vulnerability to unscrupulous power is something that I think about a lot and affects me. Sign of a healthy psyche, I think, not to be dreaming about this. I don't think I dream about it. You know, I haven't thought about these things in the way you're putting them actually before, but I don't think I have dreamt.

And I mean, what I have thought is why aren't I dreaming about them? Is there something wrong with you? Are you so kind of, you know, not in touch with your feelings or do you have no sympathy? I don't think it is that. Again, it's back to this thing of contentment. I think I did my best on the day. It might not have been very good, but it was the best on that day. I tried to tell the story as honestly and as transparently as possible

and as accurately as possible, and I'm satisfied with that, barring, of course, the odd exception, as we talked about in Rwanda, where I got the emphasis wrong, rather than the story wrong. I think it was the emphasis. But I think, if I may, the fact that you are open about vulnerability and how it affects you probably means that you are able to process something emotionally at the time. Well, vulnerability is an interesting thing. It's a huge generalisation. I think it might be more difficult for men than for women to accept it, to understand it. I really don't want to come across as holier than that, because I know lots of male reporters who got

vulnerability too. For myself, all I can say is that I grew up in a household of women, you know, I have four sisters, amazing women women who've done fantastic things and so vulnerability was always something I was comfortable with I mean I was very you know it was that kind of upbringing where you you know I always felt with them I could be who I was and I was a very very timid child I mean my sisters I think are still in shock that I've managed to do what I've done you know the story goes that I think my mother when I went to I suppose you'd call it reception class or whatever this is way back in Colombo you know in 1960 or something that my mother had to sit outside the classroom and so I could see her through the window nursing

my younger sister Christine because I just couldn't handle being away from her so I think I was very causated as well and maybe maybe that's partly why I'm able to kind of understand I'm happy to be vulnerable. I'm not happy to be vulnerable, but I accept vulnerability. And of course, now when cancer is just knocking on my door every day, you know, you have to accept that vulnerability and accept it, own it, but not let it engulf you. I'm going to come back to your family in a minute

because that leads on to the last thing that we're going to discuss. But just to throw you a bit of a curveball, and I know it's difficult for BBC presenters to answer this question, so feel free not to answer it. But I wanted to ask you, given that you were raised in a household of women, how you feel about the gender pay gap at the BBC? I mean, I'm not answering it

because of any kind of worries I have about people screaming at me. I just need to think about it. I think there obviously is a gender pay gap. I mean, I don't know what people are being – I know we publish the list for us top people, if I can call us that, and, you know, how lucky we are and how privileged we are and how much we earn.

And I'm actually more worried about the gender gap, you know, the people who don't get published and whether there is a gap there and there shouldn't be. It does concern me, I think equal pay for equal work, what is equal, and so on, it's above my pay grade. But there is a discussion to be had about that. But as a principle, yes, I think, you know, there's a difference, you know, the average wage of men and the average wage of women's because that can be skewed by all kinds of things that it just so happens that, you know, if you've got a lot of top managers who are men then it can skew the average gender gap so I'm much more comfortable talking about equal pay for equal work and that is incontrovertible I mean it just must happen and I think the BBC to be fair and I think my colleagues who are women will accept

this has probably moved faster than lots of organisations. Indeed, I think there's evidence to that effect. But it took pressure for it to happen. And that's crazy. Are you friends with other news presenters? Do you hang out together? We don't actually, weirdly, because, you know, if I'm on, then they're not on. So we're not sort of crossing paths at work, as it were.

I mean, there's a kind of overlap. I mean, so I, you know, my seat's still warm when Hugh sits in it, you know, because we have hot desking in the newsroom. So in that sense, we cross over. But I have got very good friends in the newsroom that have developed than all newsreaders. I mean, there's a kind of a fraternity of foreign correspondents, especially us older ones who are, you know,

kind of see all these young people, you know, well, younger people coming through the foreign, all are Garen. I'm just seeing all are G are, you know, kind of see all these young people, you know, younger people coming through the Foreign Club. You've got Ola Gerin. I'm just seeing Ola Gerin, you know, from the Middle East just the other day and thinking, how is she still doing it? You know, she's amazing the way she does. And then, of course, you've got people like Katya and so on. I mean, that's a different kind of foreign reporting, obviously.

But, yeah, no, I have some very, very good friendships in the newsroom. It's not because we're both presenters. I mean, one or two of them are presenters, but it's just, you know, we like each other. That's Katya Adler you mentioned there, who's the Brussels correspondent. She's a very busy woman at the moment. Have you ever watched Anchorman?

Have I? I don't think I have. You must. I think I've heard about it. I have heard, there's one, it isn't Anchorman, no, because Anchorman's a comedy, right? It is. Yeah, no, I've watched something else about a news presenter.

Can't remember what that's called now either. Broadcast News, maybe. Broadcast News. Yes, okay, well, I highly recommend Anchorman. Okay, so the final thing that we're going to discuss, and I'm not going to call it a failure because it isn't quite that, but it's in that parameter, and it's about race, and specifically your childhood and what happened when you went to boarding school.

So tell us about that. Okay, so the reason we left Ceylon as it was then, because it was obvious to Tamils, which is what I am ethnically, that Tamils were not going to have the same opportunities as Sinhalese, who are the majority people in Sri Lanka. This is, I'm going back to late 50s, early 60s, very obvious to Tamils. There can be an argument about it, but certainly that was the honest perception of Tamils. So lots of Tamils got,

indeed my father was one of the first to say, I'm getting my kids out of here because they need an education. Education for them then meant if it couldn't be in Ceylon, which later became Sri Lanka, was England. You know, it was the sort of the mother country. And in due course, that's exactly what happened. My two elder sisters were sent to,

parents of very devout Catholics, were sent to a convent here, then I was sent on my own to school. I mean, I can remember, I don't know how, I just remember getting out of a minicab with my dad, you know, and dropping me off and the kind of the cab driver saying don't forget to wash behind your ears son you know and off they went the house prefect or house captain or something boarding house captain it's a very it wasn't a boarding school it was what used to be called direct grant it's like a grammar school with a little boarding section tucked in anyway so for me being an immigrant child on my own it was sink or swim. There really wasn't a kind of gentle transition from being one thing to another. I had a kind of strange accent, a different accent one day, and I had to very quickly find another accent. There wasn't mum and dad to go home to in the

evenings to talk about it. There was just the dormitory and I very quickly understood that if it was going to be sink or swim I was the one who was going to swim and I realized that you see if you are as I am black you don't know you're black until somebody tells you you're black and what happened was so I'm 11 and it's September everybody's come back to school the white kids you know with tans and you know they've been on the beaches or whatever. And we in those days, obviously, I don't know what it's like in boarding schools now, but it's all communal. We were in a shower and somebody said, you haven't got a tan line. And at first, I didn't even know what a tan line was, you know, what the hell is he talking about? And it just went on, everybody took up the refrain, where's

his tan line? Where's his tan line? Suddenly his town line suddenly realized what it was about and you know you're there very very vulnerable i mean i just sort of wanting the plug hole to kind of suck me and get me out of this situation you know that i probably you know just wanted to leave and then the smartest kid in the you know the shower room that time is very he had a natural wit and he misused it in this occasion and said i know why you haven't got a tan line, because in bongo bongo land, you run around naked and you get tanned all over. And I didn't even really understand it at the time. Racism was just not a thing for me, but I just knew how bad I felt. Everybody was laughing. And what's crazy is I pretended to laugh. I pretended it was funny for me too. I remember it very well.

But I do also remember as a child, in only a way a child can do this. So not in a conscious way. But that was a moment I think I began to understand that I wasn't going to let my skin colour be the thing that identified me. I was going to do other things that would make people take notice of me. And the consequence of that is the man that's sitting in front of you today, Elizabeth. I mean, to all extent and purposes, an Englishman. And that is a good thing. I came here, as my sisters did, with our capacity for hard work, with such talents as we had. But the truth is that Britain gave us an opportunity that we weren't going to get in our home country.

And we took advantage of that. So that is all good. And here I am. I mean, you know, what a life, you know, to start in a house in Sri Lanka, in Ceylon, that didn't have a proper toilet, to end up being presented the news at six, to have this wonderful family, to write books, et cetera, et cetera.

That's a good thing. But my failure, and this, sorry, it's taken me a long time to get to it. So forgive me for that. No, it's a good thing. But my failure, and this is taking me a long time to get to it. So forgive me for that. No, it's incredibly eloquent. That's why I'm not interrupting you. Is I think people look at me and don't see race. So I sometimes think, I wish I had been more explicit about my immigrant journey. I wish I'd talked about it more. Because it's not easy. Not always easy. So I say I say that you know I have been chased by skinheads I've have had milk bottles thrown at me as a teenager I have been called a

wog I have been picked on on the rugby team and so on I never talked about it because again as I say for me it was just a case of getting on with it and becoming the person I wanted to be and not allow race to be the thing that defined me as it had done on that first week in the shower room. And I think had people understood my journey more as an immigrant journey, I think they would understand what a great thing immigration is, that here I am, this man, I think they like me when they see me on telly. And they can then compute it and say, you know what, this is a great thing we've done. We've given this, you know, this guy came with talents. We've given him opportunities.

And we've all lucked out. You know, it's been brilliant for kind of all of us. And sometimes, you know, I get introduced in some situations as an immigrant success story. And I always say, well, I'm not really an immigrant success story. I'm a British success story. I am what is possible when this country does what it does best, which is give people opportunities and has done for so long. Yes, there are racists in this country, but this country is not racist. I still believe that. I don't think, you know, if this country was racist, you know,

people like me would find it much, much more difficult. So that's my failure, but I haven't been more explicit about my immigrant journey. When did you meet the first person of colour in Britain that became part of your circle? My best friends are my sisters and they're people of colour. I mean, I do have lots of friends who are people of colour, but I don't remember the first one. It would have been at school. I mean, I was there for seven years or something at this school and there were more and more kids came in. But actually all my closest friends, and I'm going to spend the weekend with a guy I've known since I was 11, are white. And that's the other thing, you know, I'm always wary that I'm going to be painted into this kind of picture of the kind of coconut sort of brown on the outside and

white on the inside, which I refute, by the way. Has that ever been alleged? No, it hasn't. To be fair, fair it hasn't at least not to my face so people may think i don't know but the other experiences i told you about the kind of the racism as i experienced it just now you know this is we're talking late 60s 70s skinheads and in kind of portsmouth this which is where i went to school which is you know then was quite you know i think it's more pleasant now let's put it it that way. So when I was, I mean, for example, that time when milk bottles were kind of being thrown at me, and people shouting at me, the guys who came to my defence were white. And in that experience, my immigrant, my journey has been different, because quite often, the friends I have who are

Asian or black, most of them Asian, I guess, for them when that moment came, as we all have to confront it, by the way, this is real, this thing, this thing about being victims at times because of our colour. When that thing happens, for most people, they have to retreat into the community. There is a community to retreat into, but that is where they feel safe. I didn't have that community. My community, though, which is a strong one, were my white friends. They were the ones who came out and said, right, I'll pick a milk bottle and I'll show those buggers what to, you know, etc, etc. And that's one of the reasons why I definitely know that there is racism in this country. But I would never allow it to be said that this country is racist, that it's more than events of racism.

Did you go back during the holidays to Ghana? more than events of racism. Did you go back during the holidays to Ghana? No, because I mean, although we were sent to, you know, my parents were paying boarding fees at the school, which obviously they had money, but it was all their savings were going into that. So we couldn't afford to go back to Ghana. There was a Sri Lankan family in London

who we would go to, the Iliathambis. They were like guardians. We'd go back. Later on, I got friends, you know, I made friends. We'd go back. Later on, I got friends. You know, I made friends and I'd go for weekends or whatever, half terms to them. But there were some, I mean, right at the beginning, I can remember there was myself, a Kenyan guy,

and a guy from Hong Kong who certainly for a couple of half terms, you know, I guess my parents were naive in those days. They sort of said, could the school look after us? And the school said, yes, but we were in a B&B. And we'd we get thrown out about 10 o'clock in the morning because that's what it was about breakfast and we'd wander around portsmouth for the three of us you know go and watch in those days you could do double bills in the cinema so you just went in and watched two films and came back went in i mean i can't remember now how often that happened what did you do for food because if you only had breakfast no they probably gave they probably gave us money or something.

Oh, gosh, my heart is breaking. But it happened. I don't remember being threatened at all. We just kind of wandered around. I mean, Elizabeth, it was another world. And, you know, this is where, you know, if you wanted to make a call to talk to your parents, you had to book it.

And it just didn't happen. I mean, you know, my poor mum used to write me letters every week on those old sort of light blue airmail forms in her handwriting, beautifully neat and telling us, you know, almost on a day to day basis what they'd been doing, whether it was in Accra or Comarcy or Takaradi, wherever they'd moved on to. And poor woman, you know, because I would reply about, I don't know, maybe twice or something a term. Later on, things got better and we would go, I think, more often back to wherever they were living. But truth be told, as a family, really, from the time my elder sisters left, which is around sort of 1963, we never lived for longer than seven, eight weeks a year as a family, seven of us together, because the rest of the time, you know, we were at school, which is quite amazing because I sort of mentioned it earlier.

My best friends are my sisters. We're very, very close and we don't even live in the same country anymore, but two of them do and two of them don't. But we see each other definitely once a year. We get together. The one who's in Europe we see quite often, obviously, and we're on FaceTime all the time, you know. I mean, I've been in touch with both, the two of them today.

So we're very close. And I wonder how that happened. And maybe it is because we understand how precious that time together is because we had so little of it when we were kids. You say that Britain isn't a racist country, but that racism and racist occurrences are real. Yeah. What was the last time

you experienced something like that? A long, long time ago. And the truth is, and this goes back to what I thought was, I've made race go away. When people look at me, they don't see a black man. I don't want to own it all. I am who I am. And I've never been embarrassed or anything about my colour. But I think in a sense I'm a victim of my success, people just see me as me. I'll give you an example. When I went up to university in Durham, and there comes a point when you make friendships and so on

and you go beyond sort of going to the pub and whatever, and you end up talking about family, and I whipped out a photo of my family. And I remember one of my friends sort of shocked that there was my mum in a sari and that we were an Asian family. And I remember one of my friends sort of shocked that, you know, there was my mum in a sari and that we were, you know, an Asian family. And that's the kind of thing I mean, that listening to me, looking at me, I seem so comfortable in my Englishness, that kind of race hasn't mattered. And then ever since I've had a profile, now I've had nothing but kindness, really, from strangers on the street I don't remember I can't

remember anything nasty happening for a long long time what I do remember is you know at various times for example being and this is important to being nominated for awards on the basis of my colour there's ethnic minority media awards or the actor awards or whatever long long time ago I was nominated for one of these awards and you know i thought well do i want this award i just want to be a good journalist i never set out to be a good black journalist i mean like you know hang on i remember one of the organizers taking me away they were discussing you know they said you know really you've done the best work and this was a time when the royal television society and amnesty and various other people you know the buyer i was getting a lot of awards so

why shouldn't i get this award? This guy took me around and said, do you think it's about you, don't you? He said, it isn't, you know. It's about all those other black and Asian kids out there. It's about them and you getting this award. And it was such a kind of eye-opener for me that this thing that I'm doing,

I'm not doing for myself, I'm doing it for others. And that's borne out. I mean, you say, do I get racism? I get, I'm not doing for myself, I'm doing it for others. And it's borne out. I mean, you say, do I get racism? I get, you know, white English people, I can always hear them going, it's that newsreader, isn't it? You know, and you can kind of hear them kind of work out whether they should come and ask for a selfie or whatever. With Indians, Sri Lankans, Africans,

because I spent so much of my time in Africa. I mean, it's just completely different. You know, hey, a big hug. And they're practically introducing me to their kids and saying, have you got a son? I've got a daughter. You know, this kind of thing. Maybe they can get together.

And there's a kinship and an ownership there, which I now understand. And I'm really proud of to be able to have achieved this. Because when I was growing up, one of the consequences of not wanting to be defined by my color was that I was always hesitant to offer myself up because I think I knew then that in a different way that if I failed it wasn't just George Aligaya that was failing but it was brown-skinned George Aligaya that was failing and the people were thinking oh brown-skinned people are thick or they're not whatever so I kind of had that going on in my head as well. And so it's been great to sort of get to the point where I can be completely free and easy with my colour to be seen to represent

these people in any way as I can. And to get to a point where having spent decades really, taking my Sri Lankan-ness, my African-ness, I mean, it's honorary African-ness because I only lived there, but I went to primary school in Ghana, bundling it all up, not in a conscious way, but this is obviously what happened to me, bundling it all up, tying it up with a really strong bow and then sticking it in the attic in my mind and just left it there. And probably it took me till, I don't know, late 30s, early 40s to untie that boat, go into the attic in my mind, pull all these things out and say, wait, you know, this is great. What a privilege it is actually to be able to go to Sri Lanka and say, I'm at home here, go to Accra in Ghana and say, I'm at home here. And to be in this country that is my home and say, this is my home.

What a privilege that is. to be in this country that is my home and say, this is my home. What a privilege that is. Instead of being embarrassed by all those things and seeing a conflict in that, I live it now, you know, to its full extent and enjoy it all. It's a reclamation. It is. Yeah. And because of the kind of immigrant journey I had, it's something that I came to terms with quite late. And how do you identify yourself now? I mean, how would you describe your identity if indeed you would? you identify yourself now I mean what how would you describe your identity if indeed you would I don't think I do try and identify I mean as I say I accept much more now that my success is important to a lot of people of colour and I enjoy that position now I cherish it and I work at it and I make a point when I mean I was in Sheffield yesterday doing a gig for the Burning Land and came across some Asian kids.

And I, you know, I'm just really happy to spend time with them. And if I don't say it literally, I want them to look at me and say, you know, I can do his job. In fact, I can do it better than he can kind of thing. And that's important to me. So in that sense, I identify as a person of colour. That's important to me. So in that sense, I identify as a person of colour. But, you know, sometimes the colour thing is there if it's somehow opposed.

Yeah. You react to somebody who's identifying you by your colour. And that hasn't happened to me for a long, long time. I think it's just people just see, you know, George Alagai. So I see myself as George Alagai. People just see you as George Alagai. You're an excellent George Aligier. People just see you as George Alligier. You're an excellent George Alligier. I cannot thank you enough for giving such a moving and intelligent and thoughtful interview. Thank you so, so much. Thank you. It's been a pleasure.

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