Trevor McDonald

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McDonald anchoring the ITV News at 10.30
McDonald anchoring the ITV News at 10.30

Sir Trevor McDonald, OBE (born 16 August 1939) is a Trinidadian-born British television presenter. Until 2005, he was a newscaster with ITN, notable for having been the first black news anchor in the UK.

McDonald was seen as a part of the broadcasting establishment, and was knighted in 1999. His clear, confident delivery and serious attitude made him one of British television's most trusted reporters. He had won more awards than any other British broadcaster.[1] Since then, McDonald has become associated with tabloid productions based loosely on newscasts or documentaries.[citation needed]

Contents

[edit] Early life and career

He was born in Trinidad and Tobago in the West Indies and received his secondary education at Naparima College in San Fernando where he got his start in broadcasting through the Blue Circle Network, a school-wide broadcast. His mother had decided to name him Trevor, but when his father took him to be baptised he forgot and named him George McDonald. Despite this McDonald has always gone by the name of Trevor.

McDonald's father was an oil worker, and the family came from an unprivileged background. In spite of this, he sought to better his English by listening to the BBC World Service and reading extensively. He worked for the BBC World Service as a producer in the 1960s, and moved to the United Kingdom at the end of that decade.

[edit] ITN

He joined ITN as a reporter in 1973 and steadily rose to become a newsreader by the late 1970s. He presented the News at Ten bulletin from 1991 to 1999, and from 2001 until 2004, when News at Ten was briefly relaunched & then replaced with the ITV News at Ten Thirty. During this period he also hosted Granada Television's current affairs programme Tonight with Trevor McDonald.

Indeed, on 29 November 2005, speculation that he was about to leave ITV to work elsewhere ended when he signed a further two year contract involving producing both a documentary show and a new series of interviews, which will be of a wider general interest than the work he has done up till now.

McDonald presented his last ITV News bulletin on 15 December 2005. The veteran newsreader stepped down from his role as anchor after more than 30 years at ITN, but said he has no plans to retire completely from television. Over the end titles of his last programme the old News at Ten end theme was played.

[edit] Other Work & Media Appearances

  • Before joining the News at Ten, McDonald was diplomatic editor on Channel 4 News.
  • McDonald presented the TV series Undercover Customs which created reconstructions of the major HM Customs and Excise investigations in the UK.
  • Since their inception in 1995, he has presented the National Television Awards.
  • On 21 April 2006, McDonald presented an episode of Have I Got News For You to some degree of success; he delivered the autocue jokes - some of which were extremely risqué - in his usual sober newscaster manner, the juxtaposition of which prompted team captain Paul Merton, who usually maintains a straight face on the show, to laugh heartily in disbelief on numerous occasions. It was McDonald's first appearance in any capacity on the show since 1992.
  • McDonald is Chancellor of London South Bank University. He also has intimate ties with King's College School in Wimbledon, a London day school. He acts as an advocate for the school in its promotional videos and presides at important events in its calendar. He was notably a guest speaker and presenter of awards at King's College Junior School prizegiving in 2002, where he made a moving eulogy to a departing member of staff.
  • McDonald is the author of biographies of the cricketers Viv Richards and Clive Lloyd. He has worked as an editor of poetry anthologies, and his autobiography Fortunate Circumstances was published in 1993.
  • Lenny Henry's comic character Trevor McDoughnut, is a spoof of McDonald. McDonald once surprised Henry during a performance of McDoughnut on Tiswas by walking in to the studio to sit with Henry.
  • Performed live in Hyde Park in summer 1996 with The Who, as the newsreader in the group's staging of their Quadrophenia.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Sir Trevor reads final bulletin

[edit] External links

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