Test Match Special - #40from40: Sir Trevor McDonald

Episode Date: May 14, 2020

Sir Trevor McDonald takes a View from the Boundary with Henry Blofeld in 2004, discussing his life and career in broadcasting.

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Boundary with the Test Match Special team. Hello, Jonathan Agnew here to bring you another classic view from the boundary from the archives of Test Match Special. For this little trip down memory lane, we're hearing from a very familiar figure from the world of British broadcasting. During a career that spanned over 30 years as a news anchor, Sir Trevor McDonnell was the face of ITV's News at 10, covering some of the biggest stories of the 20th century. His journey to frontline journalism is a fascinating one, having moved to the UK from

Trinidad in the late 1960s. And as we'll hear, the story involves one of West Indian cricket's most important figures. Well, this interview was recorded in 2004 at Sir Trevor's beloved oval as the West Indies played England in the final match of a memorable series. So let's join the inimitable Henry Blofeldt. Yes, welcome back to a sun-drenched oval. I have with me, I'm lucky enough to have with me, the nation's favorite newsreader, uh, where it is. one of those impeccable tailored suits, which makes him look like a permanent advertisement for the tailor in Qatar.

Trevor McDonnell, welcome to View from the Boundary. Henry, thank you very much. When did you first read the news for television? Oh gosh, it's such a long time ago. I almost forget, but it must have been about 20 years. I worked for a man called Nigel Ryan, who actually employed me. And he said to me one day,

I have been thinking about your career. This was news to me. I didn't even think I had one. You're making the pun. You're using the pun. That, exactly. I was using the pun. I think it was lost on the occasion at that time.

But anyway, I said, you know, I was very, very grateful. And he said, what I think you should do is to spend half your time traveling around the world, doing diplomatic, international political stories, which I had expressed as an interest. And the rest of them, I think you should do some presenting. I thought all my pigeons or chickens had come home at once. Now, what are the most important attributes for a newsreader? Well, it's very, very difficult, and I'm not sure that a newsreader is the person qualified to give it. I'm told that you must, at all costs, be accessible.

That's obvious. That's true about all broadcasting. What do you mean you've got to turn up on time? I think you have to turn up on time. That's probably very, very good idea. It's rather important, is? It's terribly, terribly important. I'm also told that you must, in some way, have what people call loosely. but desperately important, I suspect, credibility.

People must believe what you say. They must think that what you say is credible and they must be able to take it to heart. So we don't all think you're telling porkies? Precisely. So it boils down to that. And I suspect that on grave occasions when one is announcing sad news

like the death of members of the royal family or presidential elections and things like that, one must also have something which is called gravitas, which I'm not quite sure what it means or what it signifies, but I think I know what is intended by the expression. But you have it in space. Well, I'm not sure, but if I do, I'm terribly grateful because I'm not to show I can define it. Why did you say presidential elections are sad events?

Well, no, no, no. I didn't say sad. I was saying sort of sad or important events. I see. I hope they're not sad, although occasionally for people like Al Gore, Maybe they can be. Indeed. Now, Trevor, we're going to go back to sort of your main job later on. But coming from Trinidad, cricket has always been, I would think, at the center of your life. As you know, Henry, you know the area almost as well as I do,

who grew up imitating famous West Indian cricketers. It's in the blood. And, of course, Trinidad, the home of Lerie Constantine, almost the founding father of West Indian Cricket, and the home of CLR James, the literary founding father of Caribbean Crickets. And both very, very, very important people. I mean, CLR James, I read him almost as a child and came to appreciate a lot about cricket and about what the significance of cricket took to the West Indies from him.

And of course, Larry Constantine, through my parents, I knew and got to know very well. And he actually played a part in the start of my professional career in Trinidad. I came here in 1962 to cover Trinidad's Independence Conference. and I was supposed to send back 10-minute reports every night on conferences at the end of which each day you'd get a communique which said the Trinidad and Tobago Independence Conference and the Commonwealth Foreign Office met today at Marlborough House and they agreed they discussed many issues concerning Trinidad's move to independence

and we'll meet again tomorrow and I was supposed to produce 10 minutes and I went to Larry and India were here this year that year and I said you've got to help me And he said, but I can't. I can't tell you what is going on to conference. And then he agreed under duress and sort of desperate pleading by me to answer any questions which I might put to him as faithfully and as honestly as he could. So I dreamt up these inane questions, and he provided brilliant answers.

And my career was launched as a sort of international reporter. So I owe a great, great deal to Larry Constantin. I was lucky enough to know him. He used to write for the Daily Sketch, I think, in those days. He did, and he lived. up in North London. Do you remember? Yes, he was a great friend of the other writer about cricket Denzel Bachelor. That's right. And I met him with Denzel. It was lucky enough to do so.

Now, Trevor, you said a few years ago, do you remember when England were touring the West Indies and they came upon that really rather ghastly pitch at Sabina Park and the test match was abandoned after a few minutes. You said then West Indies cricket is in danger of foundering in a morass of official short-sightedness, indifference and incompetence. What would you say today? I would try to express it slightly more strongly, much to the dislike of my West Indian compatriots. No, I thought that was a terrible, terrible thing.

I mean, you know, we as children in the West Indies, we made wickets for our play at weekends and at lunchtimes and so on, and we used to clear ground and get up wickets. Now, this, of course, is a much more professional business. And the basic thing you can get right is to produce a slightly playable wicket. I mean, if you can't do that, well, then I suggest all is probably lost. I was very disheartened by that. And in fact, as a West Indian, quite ashamed of it, really.

I thought, you know, that was a new low. Coming back to today, what about your fellow Trinidadian brand? Lara. What about Brian Lara? I think he's a great cricketer. Great batsman. I think he's a great batsman. Oh yes. Undoubted. Absolutely. And, you know, I've watched some of those innings where he's got

those massive scores. And fairly incomparable, really. I don't know how successful he's been as a captain. I mean, authority is higher than I can claim to be. Would probably have a final say on this. But

captains have have a very special role. When I watched Clive Lloyd and Viv Richards, one, you could actually see the planning, the determination, the passion, the zeal which went into it all. I'm not too sure that one sees this in Brown-Lower. Now, this is not to suggest that he doesn't have it and doesn't do this in the dressing room. It's not always visible out there. One saw it in people. People like Lloyd and Richards wore their pride on their sleeves, and you knew. I mean, Richards had that swagger, which was, I mean, it showed a kind of utter contempt for the opposition and for any bowler who had this sort of indignity to attempt to bowl at him. And one saw these things.

I'm not sure one sees it in that same way. I don't think you'll see it in Lara when he's in the field. I don't think he's a natural leader. He's a genius as a cricketer, beyond a doubt. but I think there are certain people. I mean, I think if Dennis Compton, who was a genius as a cricketer, ever been asked to captain an England side, I think he is... It might have been a disaster. It wouldn't have worked. It might have been a disaster.

And, you know, people... And these things are thrown up in these ways. And people, you know, we all, in that kind of Shakespearean way, fulfill different roles in life. Do you see a solution for the West Indies present predicament? I don't. I was talking to David Steele, the Northampton, England, for former player, and he said that Andy Roberts,

no less of an authority had voiced a view that I've frequently heard and quite frequently, just as frequently dismissed that the West Indies move now to American sports like basketball and baseball,

those moves are taking away from the game some of the people who might have come into cricket. I am not too sure. I still find that there is, and I may be very wrong, I'm talking from a long, long way, away from the scene now

and I have not been in touch intimately with what's going on there but I do sense still that there is a kind of factionalism which still seems to have a sort of role and a place in Westerners cricket which at this point in the 21st century

one would have thought you know with everybody kind of coming together it seems to go against the trend it seems to go against all that other nations are doing well the only thing is I suppose the West Indies is a special case because the West Indies in terms of cricket has made up

of a fair number of different countries, whereas that's not the same in any other test playing country. No, but they've had a long time to get that right, you see Henry, because I remember and this reminds me, I did an interview with the man who was the first prime minister

of the Federation, a man called Sir Grantley Adams. And he came back from London having tried to save the Federation and failed. And he came up to me as I met him at the airport and his almost his first words were, Mac, what are we going to do about West Indies cricket? Is the kind of political divisiveness which ensued and the kind of faciparous separate ways, would that mean that West Indies cricket would be rent asunder

by it? And we were hoping not. And to some extent, in the fact that there is still a Western East cricket team, it was not allowed to dissipate in this way. But I think one needs to take a greater interest in really keeping it as a unit and not as several factions. Back to your own broadcasting career, you worked in radio in Trinidad, then in 1970, you came to London to work for the World Service. Now, how are you accepted in those days? Because, I mean, there weren't that many black broadcasters were there in England? Except that when I started in the World Service, don't forget, this was at Bush House. Yes. And Bush House was the United Nations of broadcasting. One sat at lunch with people.

people from Tanzania and India and China. There were great Soviet experts. There were people from all over the world. It was really, when you, at the end of a day, when you came out from Into the Orwich and walked down the Strand, you realized that there was something more monolithic about the culture. Yes. Because one had just been immersed, quite wonderfully and happily,

in something which was very much United Nations in broadcasting. But your question applies to when I started as an ITN. That was 1973. That was 1973. And I was the first black national reporter, and it was strange. How were you received? I mean, were you made to feel uncomfortable? I don't think I ever was made to feel uncomfortable.

When I joined ITN, I was terribly careful to make sure about the terms under which I joined. I didn't want to be seen or perceived as the sort of token black reporter. And I said that. That would have been humiliating, wouldn't be? Well, it would have been humiliating. and it equates with nothing that I believe about life or about the world or about communities or about any kind of modern concept of the way people live. And it would have done ITN, I think, no great justice to have done the same to have done that.

So I insisted on doing everything that everybody else was doing. And so I was sent to Northern Ireland. And there's a funny kind of cricket story to that all. I came to the Oval after I had been doing about four or five years in Northern Ireland. And one of my West Indian friends, the Oval was, much more a kind of West Indian centre in the 1980s than it is now. I mean, it somewhat has dissipated ever so slightly.

But it was a great kind of Western contingent. I went up there and they were all terribly pleased to see me. And one of them said to me, my goodness, what have I'd Ian done? Here they have hired the first black reporter and they have sent him to Northern Ireland to get killed. And I said, no, no, no, you've totally misunderstood it. I insisted on going there because I wanted to be part of whatever was the big story. Northern Ireland was the big story in the sempsies. I wanted to be part of it as my demonstration of my total inclusiveness in the system.

So it gave me also a very good lesson about how difficult it is for people who have to deal with people like me because, you know, others are watching and they may easily come to entirely the wrong conclusion. Now, were you aware of racism in those days? Not very much. One was aware that it was and does still exist. One reads a lot about it. But you know, the curious, curious thing

is that television cameras are very magnetic things. And you can almost hide behind them. And if you present yourself to do... People love a pairing on television for some bizarre reason. I've never understood it myself. And you turn up with a camera to interview somebody. You said that with a twinkling, right?

And they're not really too concerned about who you are. I mean, they're desperate to appear. And I had a very, very easy ride, and I was given a choice of great stories. I traveled through Europe and around the world. As I said, I did Northern Ireland. And conscious of it, yes, suffered from it. Absolutely not.

Now, Northern Ireland, then the Middle East, and in the early 80s to South Africa, which must have been a strange one. I mean, there you were, as a black journalist, being fated by racist. government, which is an extraordinary sort of circumstance. The South Africans, the Blessam, always had this sort of wonderful attitude about life. I was allowed to go to South Africa, but they genuinely believed that if they allowed you

to see what they were trying to do, you would agree with it, and it would be absolutely fine. I took a slightly different view, and after a while, I mean, I sent back several reports and so on, and I got the Dennis Worrell, the ambassador here, sort of, banned me from going there again because I annoyed them but it was something I quite enjoyed doing. Somebody said to me, you know, how would you fare in South Africa? You know, it is

after all a country governed by whites. I said yes, but I mean the majority population is black so I should be quite at home. I really, really enjoyed it and you know I came away with the view that South Africa was capable, was susceptible to a kind of accommodation

between the races. They needed each other. Yes. They needed each other desperately, and unfortunately, it has marvellously turned around, and it's now a wonderful place to go to. Now, you were the first person, were you not, to interview Nelson Mandela after his release from Robin Miller? I was very lucky. That was very lucky, because it was literally the toss of a coin. But I did, and I was, and I mean, I've got to know him terribly well after that, and it was a great moment. Tell us about him. Well, I found that he was one of those people to whom one could apply the description, statesman, without any qualification.

He had come out an unconscionably long 27 years in prison and yet emerged without any trace of bitterness and talked not about... It was extraordinary, wasn't it? It was quite extraordinary. And talk...

And being a journalist, you're not... You like a bit of tittle-tattle, a bit of gossip. You know, how badly were you treated? Was it frightful? Did they mistreat you? Did they beat you up? All in the past, he said. My job now is to look ahead to the future. There's a lot to be done. And I want to play a role

in doing that. I mean, extraordinary attitude. And I really, really enjoyed meeting somebody who could put aside that history and look forward. How lucky South Africa were to have him as their first president when they'd all come together.

Now, another chap who I dare say he wouldn't describe as a natural statesman who did interview was Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War after the invasion of Kuwait. Tell us about that. Entirely different proposition of course, and I found it quite intimidating.

He was a very good interlocutor. I mean, he attempted to answer all the questions. A bright man? I think he was very business-like. I don't know how clever. I mean, one was, there was the language barrier. It was all done through interpreters, and so nuance and all that sort of stuff

is missed when that sort of process happened. So one is never quite sure. But he was a good person to interview, and he was absolutely firm in his views. Since that time, in retrospect, I've come to believe that the ship he ran was so tightly controlled at the top that, you know, when people talk today about the fact that there were no weapons of mass destruction, you know, nobody would have told Saddam Hussein to his face.

Mr. President, we don't have those weapons who instructed us to. There used to be a joke about Tariq Aziz, his deputy minister of some sort, that Tariq Aziz would be said to by Saddam Hussein, what time is it? And Tariq would say, Mr. President, what time would you like it to? be. And the whole structure was run like that. It was a very, very tight shape. That's a marvelous coming. And nobody told him anything. So I'm quite surprised. I don't think any scientist would have gone to him and said, you know, Mr. President, we haven't quite got those

weapons of mass destruction online. We can't really bomb Israel and Kuwait. They would never dare have told him. No. But now, the security, when you went there, were you frisked and stripped It was fairly unpleasant. I mean, they were very, very unpleasant. To get to him was quite amazing. You were taking away to a guesthouse for several days, I mean, kept in isolation, and then you were given two or three dummy runs for this interview.

When, in retrospect, it was never going to happen. Did you have to interview look-alikes, do you mean? Well, it never came to that, but we were taken to locations, which were look-alike locations, and it was all terribly, terribly unnerving. I came pretty, pretty close to losing my cool. Now, was he, I mean, when I say did you like him, was he, did he seem a reasonable person or was he a totally fanatical? He didn't seem fanatical.

He seemed, he didn't seem entirely reasonable either because the logic of what he said about the invasion of Kuwaitan made absolutely no sense. But did he evince some sort of thing of evil? Was there something which one could say, and this is an evil? Of course not. I didn't see anything like that. He was tough, he was very pragmatic. Half a dozen cabinet people, if you one can call it that, sat around. And I got very annoyed because there were interpreters, there were people milling around,

and this was very unnerving. And I said to one of them at the end, why have you, I mean, this is an ordinary interview. Why have you hung around here watching this? And they said, we don't usually see him question. There is not prime ministers or presidential question time on a Wednesday in Baghdad. And they all stood there to see someone ask what I hope were fairly kind of tough, uncompromising questions, and they don't always see that. Nobody does that. And in that lesson, in that kind of one sees the isolation in which Saddam Hussein found himself

and why that catalogue of disasters befell his country and his regime. Now, Trevor, change tack again, Trinidad, the home of Calypso. Lord Kitchener and the Mighty Sparrow and everyone of that sort. We've got our own Calypsonian, the greatest Calypsonian in England, Alexander the Great in the back of the box, and he's sang a Calypso before the start of play about what happened yesterday, and he's now going to sing us another Calypso

about what happened this morning. So over to Alexander the Great. Thank you. Two more wind is wicked's gone. In this morning session, Lara went for 15 run, and they now feel in depression The great Sir Trevor Macdonald

entertained us through the lunch break But wind is now on the back foot With a four-match whitewash at stake Well done, brilliant, isn't it? Absolutely, very good. Now, we Calypsoe when you were young, you loved it? Absolutely, and I thought, I mean, you were saying, Calypso earlier about the Calypso,

you know, you know, Westernian politics can be fairly sedate on the surface while all the kind of rumblings happen underneath. And the people who puncture this almost hypocrisy about life because we like to pretend that things are all smooth where in fact, you know, it's all happening just below. And the people who do this so wonderfully, as resident Calypsonians said, were the Calypsonians.

And I've always thought some of the political satire and some of the political comment is of the highest order, and I've always loved it. And now of the future, are you contemplating retirement? No, I will probably stop doing some of the things I do to give myself a chance to do other things.

I'm not very, very good at sitting still and contemplating doing nothing. I say to all my friends, in a rather cliched way, there's a sort of wonderful Tennysonian line about how dull it is to pause, to rust and burnished, not to shine in use. Ulysses. As long to breathe were life.

I learned it as a saying lesson in my first half had eaten at the age of 30. Well, there you are. Well, you went to better school than I did, but I learned it too. Now, I'm going to ask you a final question. If ITN suddenly said, right, we're going to celebrate your next anniversary, we're going to give you the most expensive dinner at the Savoy Grill or wherever you like in London, and you're going to be allowed to bring three guests. When you're looking back over your career, whether they're alive or dead, It doesn't matter. Who would they be?

Or three favourites. I'm glad you said alive or dead, because they'll be all, I think one is alive. We'd have to exhume a few, would we? We'd have to exhume a few. I would really like to have somebody like Thomas Jefferson did it. I mean, I think what he did about framing a kind of, or that sort of framework for an American constitution. And the way those guys got about it, somebody said to me the other day, of course, he delegated most of the work, you know, and didn't write a lot of it himself.

And there other drafters who were much more professional about doing it. But I would certainly like to have him. I would have CLR James. Yes. And I think he and Jefferson would get on very well. And I would like, there's a woman called Nan Cheng, I think, who wrote a book about that enormous turmoil of the Cultural Revolution in China. I find it one of the most gripping things I've ever read.

You know, somebody taking a Ming vase in the interest of politics or political reform and letting it drop to the floor. And my heart broke into a million pieces just hearing that that happened. I would have her. and it would be probably a good assimilation of cultures. You'll be still talking at breakfast time, I think we probably would never start. Well, that was a lovely listen. Sir Trevor McDonald is still a regular at the Oval

and is keenly involved in cricket. Since 2018, he's been the president of the Lord's Taverners, no less. I hope you enjoy listening to that. There's plenty more to enjoy from the archives of Test Match Special. What about this interview with a young Rory Bremner in 1985? When did we discover this gift of being able to imitate people? I think it was at school, actually. It's the old story about if you ask a lot of impressionists,

they always say at school they were imitating the masters or whatever. And I think I did that. I wasn't that much of a sports model. I played in a second and 11 level. And so I used to spend a lot of time in the back of coaches and whatever other people were doing. I was doing commentaries. And so I used to do Bill McLaren with all this of hello and welcome to Twickenham.

And of course, it's a really exciting day. You join us for the 33rd game between England and this extremely talented, all black side, and these sort of things. And it grew on from there. And I married really those sort of impressions to the sort of material that I remember hearing as a kid after the Edinburgh Festival,

which is where I came from originally. How do you set about copying someone's voice? Do you play a tape, you know, backwards and forwards and backwards and forwards? Funnily enough, to begin with, I didn't, actually. It's just, as more and more people ask me to do different voices. In fact, recently, I'm trying to think of the voice. I was asked to do Roger Moore, for example. People said, could you do Roger Moore?

And what I did, I sort of remembered he was interviewed a couple of times, so I had a quick look. And I realized that he has a very deep voice, a very laid-back style of speaking, in which he hesitates the same way. And so it's really, when people throw new voices at me, that I have to have a listen.

Generally, there have been voices, though, that I've worked on by instinct. and when you take somebody like Richie Bennow, for example, as a king cricket affair and myself, I've listened to him for many seasons. And what with him and Jim? I'll think over the years, you get quite a good idea of the regime and quite a good idea of how they sound, and it went on from there. But I'm actually having to work more at the voices now.

Do you ever ring people up with their voice? I mean, does that put them off a bit? I don't think you run me up. I've done it to a number of people, actually. I did it to Radio 4 producer the other day. in fact, I rang up one of the people who works on the Wogan program

is Peter Estill and he used to work together with Ian Gardehouse who's my producer for colour supplement the little bit we do there so I rang out Peter in Scotland

said, Hello, Peter is Ian Gardhouse here for Radio 4 unfortunately when we won't be able to release Rory until about half an hour before Wogan goes on air is that going to be all right?

There was silence down the other end and he was very very worried and eventually I and also on my answer phone I put sort of Prince Charles is very kindly answering my phone at the moment

because unfortunately I've had to go out and get nappies for Harry and so these electronic flunkies you see and listen So people ring you up they hear Prince Charles does it?

Okay, they might even hear Robin Day depending on how I'm feeling in fact And if you want to hear the full interview with Rory It's available via BBC sounds along with many of our other

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