Clive Myrie is a British journalist, news presenter, and television host best known as a chief presenter on BBC News and the host of the long-running quiz shows Mastermind and Celebrity Mastermind.
He joined the BBC in 1987 and built one of the most decorated careers in British broadcast journalism, reporting from over 80 countries across four decades.
Who is Clive Myrie?
Clive Myrie is a British journalist, newsreader, and television presenter who serves as one of the BBC’s chief news anchors.
His career spans more than three decades of frontline reporting, including coverage of wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Ukraine.
Beyond hard news, he hosts the BBC Two quiz show Mastermind and its BBC One companion Celebrity Mastermind, a role he took over from John Humphrys in August 2021.
He also hosted the BBC’s 2024 UK general election night coverage alongside Laura Kuenssberg and anchored the BBC’s coverage of the 2024 US presidential election.
His travel documentary series have drawn large audiences. Clive Myrie’s Italian Road Trip aired on BBC Two in 2023 and became one of the channel’s most popular shows that year.
A second series, Clive Myrie’s Caribbean Adventure, followed in 2024. A third travelogue, Clive Myrie’s African Adventure, aired on BBC Two in January and February 2026, taking him to Cape Town, Accra, and Marrakesh.
Clive is also a regular host of the BBC Proms and has made jazz documentaries for BBC Radio 2 and Jazz FM.
Early Life of Clive Myrie
Clive Augustus Myrie was born on August 25, 1964, in Farnworth, Lancashire, near Bolton. He is the fourth of seven children, consisting of four boys and three girls.
His parents, Lynne and Norris Myrie, were Jamaican immigrants who arrived in Britain in 1962 in search of better educational prospects for their children.
His mother, Lynne, had been a teacher in Jamaica and later worked as a seamstress for fashion designer Mary Quant.
Myrie’s father, Norris, worked in a factory producing car batteries. Clive’s parents later divorced, and his father returned to Jamaica after retiring.
Growing up, Clive delivered newspapers on a paper round in Bolton and read every paper from cover to cover, dreaming of becoming a journalist.
That early immersion in news shaped his sense of purpose from a young age.
He has spoken publicly about facing racism both as a child and throughout his career, and his memoir addresses how being Black informed his perspective on the stories he reported.
Clive Myrie Age / Birthday
Clive Myrie is 62 years old as of 2026, born on August 25, 1964. His zodiac sign is Virgo, a sign often linked with precision, analytical thinking, and high professional standards.
At 62, he remains one of the most active and visible presenters at the BBC, anchoring major news events and hosting Mastermind.
Clive Myrie Ethnicity and Nationality
Clive Myrie holds British nationality, born in Farnworth, Lancashire.
He is of Jamaican heritage, the son of Windrush generation parents who migrated from Jamaica to England in 1962.
His family background in the Caribbean, including a great-grandfather who helped build the Panama Canal and a great-uncle who fought in World War One, forms a central thread in his memoir.
Clive Myrie Height and Weight
Clive Myrie stands at 5 feet 10 inches, which is equal to 178cm or 1.78m, while his weight is not revealed.
He has black hair and black eyes.
Clive Myrie Education
Clive attended Hayward Grammar School in Bolton, then completed his A-levels at Bolton Sixth Form College. He went on to study Law at the University of Sussex, graduating with a Bachelor of Laws degree in 1985.
The University of Sussex later awarded him an honorary “Doctor of the University” degree in 2019. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Staffordshire in 2016.
Since 2023, Clive has served as Pro-Chancellor of the University of Bolton. In 2024, the University of the Arts London named him its Chancellor.
His connection to the University of Sussex remains strong. In October 2024, he returned to campus to discuss his memoir as part of the University’s Big Read initiative.
Clive Myrie Career
Clive Myrie joined the BBC in 1987 as a trainee local radio reporter.
Over nearly four decades, he rose through local, regional, and national broadcasting to become one of the corporation’s most recognized faces.
Early Career and Foreign Correspondence (1987-2009)
After starting in local radio, Clive spent a year at Independent Radio News before returning to the BBC in 1988. He reported for Radio Bristol and contributed to the regional television programme Points West.
His BBC journalism trainee scheme place came in 1988, and he steadily moved from local to national broadcasting.
In 1996, Clive became the BBC’s full-time foreign correspondent, with his first overseas post based in Japan.
From there, he went on to serve as the BBC’s Asia correspondent, Los Angeles correspondent, Washington correspondent, and Paris correspondent, before later holding the role of Europe correspondent based in Brussels.
His overseas assignments covered some of the most significant events of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, including the impeachment of US President Bill Clinton, conflicts in Croatia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and the Rohingya refugee crisis in Bangladesh in 2017.
During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Clive served as an embedded correspondent and, due to the danger of that assignment, wrote a goodbye letter to his family in case he did not return.
In September 2010, he broke the story that the Basque separatist group ETA was preparing to declare a ceasefire.
After serving as Europe correspondent, he joined the BBC News Channel as a presenter in April 2009.
Major Presenting Roles (2009-2021)
Following his appointment to the BBC News Channel, Clive expanded his presenting profile across multiple BBC One programmes, including BBC Weekend News, BBC News at Ten, and BBC Breakfast.
From 2019, he concentrated on the BBC One network bulletins, presenting the BBC News at Six and BBC News at Ten on rotation with colleagues including Sophie Raworth.
He has occasionally presented on BBC World News and made appearances on programmes including Richard Osman’s House of Games in September 2017 and Celebrity Antiques Road Trip in November 2021.
He also hosted a ten-week documentary series, The Definitive History of Jazz in Britain, on Jazz FM, which ran from April to June 2021.
His coverage of US politics has been a recurring feature of his career. He has reported on seven US presidential races and covered the administrations of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.
He also hosted BBC coverage of the 2016 US election as a presenter on BBC World News.
Mastermind, Ukraine, and Recent Work (2021-Present)
On March 22, 2021, the BBC announced Clive as the new host of Mastermind and Celebrity Mastermind, replacing John Humphrys, who had held the role for 18 years. Clive made his hosting debut on August 23, 2021.
In 2022, he presented the main BBC One news bulletins live from Kyiv as Russian forces invaded Ukraine, one of the most high-profile journalistic assignments in his career.
He also interviewed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during that period.
Clive presented the BBC documentary The Crown Jewels for BBC One, broadcast as part of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations in June 2022.
He hosted the BBC’s 2024 UK general election night coverage alongside Laura Kuenssberg, and anchored BBC coverage of the 2024 US presidential election.
His travel series have introduced a new dimension to his public profile, with Italian Road Trip (2023), Caribbean Adventure (2024), and African Adventure (2026) all airing on BBC Two.
Clive Myrie Awards and Recognition
Clive has received multiple major awards and honours throughout his career. At the Royal Television Society Television Journalism Awards 2021, he won both Television Journalist of the Year and Network Presenter of the Year.
He also won the RTS Network Presenter of the Year award again in 2023.
His awards include:
- RTS Television Journalist of the Year (2021)
- RTS Network Presenter of the Year (2021 and 2023)
- Golden Nymph Journalism Award, Monte Carlo Television Festival (2003)
- Bayeux-Calvados Award for War Correspondents (for his reporting on ethnic violence in Borneo)
- BAFTA nomination as part of the BBC team covering the Mozambique floods (2000)
- Honorary Doctorate, University of Staffordshire (2016)
- Honorary Doctorate, University of Sussex (2019)
- Honorary Doctorate, Edge Hill University (2023)
Clive also holds honorary degrees from several other UK universities and serves as Chancellor of the University of the Arts London and Pro-Chancellor of the University of Bolton.
In June 2024, Myrie appeared as a guest on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, selecting “Long, Long Summer” by Dizzy Gillespie as one of his choices.
Clive Myrie Books
Clive published his memoir, Everything Is Everything: A Memoir of Love, Hate and Hope, with Hodder and Stoughton in September 2023.
The 320-page book became a Sunday Times bestseller and draws on his Windrush generation family history, his experiences as a Black journalist in a white-dominated industry, and his frontline reporting from across the globe.
The memoir references his great-grandfather who helped build the Panama Canal, and a great-uncle who served in the First World War and later became a prominent police detective in Jamaica.
An updated edition of the audiobook was released in 2024. The book was selected as the Big Read title by Kingston University for 2024 and by City St George’s, University of London for its 2025 Big Read.
Clive Myrie Wife
Clive Myrie is married to Catherine Myrie, an upholsterer and furniture restorer.
The two first met in 1992 at a London book launch for a publication about Swiss cheeses, where Catherine was then working in publishing.
Clive has described the moment as love at first sight. The couple married six years later, in 1998, at Corpus Christi Catholic Church in Covent Garden. They live together in Islington, North London.
In interviews, Clive credits Catherine with giving him “the courage and space to pursue my dreams.” She was due to appear in Clive Myrie’s Italian Road Trip but had to withdraw from that series.
However, Catherine does appear in Clive Myrie’s Caribbean Adventure (2024), alongside Clive’s parents and sister. Clive and Catherine made the mutual decision not to have children, a subject he has discussed openly in interviews.
He told The Times that he and Catherine tried when they were younger but “nothing seemed to be happening,” and they eventually decided it would be unfair given how much they both love to travel.
Myrie does not have any children.
Clive Myrie Net Worth and Salary
Clive Myrie’s BBC salary for the year ending March 2026 was £320,000 to £324,999, placing him 17th on the BBC’s published list of on-air talent paid above £178,000.
This is down slightly from his previous year’s salary of £335,000 to £339,999.
Salary
In October 2024, Clive apologised to the BBC after the Sunday Times reported he had failed to declare at least £65,000 in outside earnings over the preceding 12 months.
Those undeclared engagements included 11 corporate events, among them speaking at the Suffolk Chamber of Commerce’s Prestige Dinner, hosting a National Residential Landlords Association conference, and chairing an Intermediary Mortgage Lenders Association lunch.
Two of the individual events commanded fees above £10,000 each, with most others valued between £5,000 and £10,000.
The BBC reminded him of his obligations, and he apologised publicly. His total outside earnings across the period since 2021 were reported to be at least £145,000.
His income comes primarily from his BBC presenting and reporting work, supplemented by corporate speaking engagements, his memoir royalties, and his hosting of Mastermind.
Clive Myrie Social Media
Clive Myrie is active on X (formerly Twitter) under the handle @CliveMyrieBBC, where he shares updates on his journalism, TV appearances, and personal projects including his memoir.
He uses the platform regularly and posted about his memoir’s publication in September 2023. His social media presence reflects both his professional journalism work and his broader interests in jazz, film, and travel.
Conclusion
Clive Myrie’s career at the BBC spans nearly four decades of frontline journalism, from local radio in Bristol to live reporting from Kyiv and election-night coverage for the nation.
His memoir, his Mastermind presenting, and his travel documentary series have made him one of the most visible and respected figures in British broadcasting.