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My guest today is David Blevins. David is the Ireland
correspondent for Sky News and has been for I think 26 years,
he said, well, maybe 16 years anyway.
A lot of years, 26, I think, Yeah.
And in that time he has covered some unbelievable stories.
He is some some of the biggest stories that ever happened here.
David has been the guy reporting on it, including a lot of
political stuff, the Good Friday Agreement, the Omar bomb, the
Queen visiting Ireland, these huge stories David was there for
and he speaks so well about them and just a thoroughly nice guy.
So I think you'll enjoy this episode.
I will be back with the solo episode on Friday as per and
there. And look, we'll be ranting about
a few things on Friday. So let's just enjoy it.
But let's get into this episode with my man David Blevins
zippers. See you on the other side,
David. Thanks for doing the podcast.
I ask everyone, you've got to tell me first of all about your
your tea habits. You know, and don't feel that
you've got to beg them up just to join the Tea with Me podcast.
If you if you only drink a couple months, let's just be
honest about it. This will be the first
confession probably of the podcast.
I don't really drink tea. I drink gallons of coffee and
I'm not snobbish about anything else in the world.
I come from a really working class background, so there's
nothing snobbish about me apart from coffee.
I hate instant coffee, but I I drink gallons of coffee every
day. I suppose it's what keeps me
going. And the best coffee in the world
is Kenyan. I fell in love with Kenyan
coffee visiting Africa way back about 10 years ago.
I fell in love with it so much I went 10 times in 10 years and.
Just for the coffee. Not quite, but the coffee was a
big part of the journey. So I drink more coffee than I do
tea. Well, you know, you know what,
David? Normally I'd be very
disappointed that somebody doesn't drink tea.
But your your level of commitment to your coffee
drinking outweighs my disappointment that you don't
drink enough tea. You say, you say there that you
don't really drink tea. So that makes me think somewhere
in the back of my mind there is maybe an instance, there is
maybe a certain situation where you might accept a cup of tea.
What would that situation be? If I'm totally asked, the only
time I would really not drink coffee is if there is nothing
else available but instant coffee and I might be tempted to
have a cup of tea then. But literally I would drink tea
like twice a month. My wife Ruth doesn't really
drink coffee at all. She's the complete opposite.
She drinks tea all the time. So Ruth has an interesting.
Dynamic. I mean, I'm, I'm like, I'm
fairly new to coffee. So I mean, I don't know coffee
at all, but you know, I'm pretty new to it.
Maybe have a cup of coffee a day.
And it's funny that you say about instant coffee because I
also would definitely turn my nose up at instant coffee.
But I can't taste the difference between instant coffee and the
finest artisan coffee of all time.
But I think I just don't like the fact that it's called
instant coffee. I like the idea that you've got
to work for it a bit more. But I'd say, I mean, in your
profession, I would say you pick up the habit of drinking coffee
probably quite easily because you're on the go so much because
you're working crazy hours at times as well.
And sometimes maybe you know, having to having to stay up to
see what, what develops or something.
Yeah, and I much prefer to have me at my own coffee at home
because we've got one of those wee machines.
It's not a very fancy machine. I kind of long for one of the
really top of the range ones, but we use the little pods in
there, so it is real coffee. But apart from that, I'm
probably keeping the Apple Green on the M1 in shares because at
least you can get a real cup of coffee there on your way to or
from Belfast. I'll be honest and it's not been
said on the podcast yet and it might not be said again, but
Lavazza is very underrated for their for their tea and coffee.
Big fan, but I also use the pod. And I think you'll agree, David,
that there's nothing worse on earth than whenever you think
you've put a pod in, you make a coffee and then you're just left
with warm water with a suggestion of brown in it.
There's nothing. That's absolutely right and I
have discovered on a couple of occasions that there's a dodgy
pod in the box as well where there's maybe only half the
amount of coffee in it and you get the same effect, but there's
there's nothing worse. You're absolutely right, and
you've got to start the process all over again.
David, there's so much I want to, I want to chat to you about
because someone who's worked in journalism for as long as you're
as yourself, I have so many, so many questions.
And you know, I've done a little bit of research, which I never
normally do about the sort of stories you've covered and all
that kind of thing. So I'd love to chat to you about
that, but. You must have been stuck for
something to read. Well, no, no, no.
I mean, look, you, I see you on my TV all the time because all
the time I do genuinely have Sky News on.
And then I want to ask you about today, for example, if I you're
maybe in Sky News, maybe in the studios.
I was going to say, do you like get told at the start of the
week you're going here to cover this there to cover that and
then you're going to do this? Or is that impossible because
the news you just have to wait for stuff to happen?
Is there is there ever days where you're just chilling out
nine to five in the studio, just taking it easy?
Not really. It's the question I think a lot
of people ask us when they want to know how journalism works.
Who makes the decision about what stories covered?
Is it the news editor? Is it you makes that decision?
You know, is it somebody further up the chain of command being
that decision? But literally there are no two
days the same. That's why I think I really love
doing this job after all these years.
These days they call me their senior Ireland correspondent,
which simply just means I'm really old now and I've been
doing this forever. But I love the fact that when
you wake up in the morning, you literally don't know if you're
going to be going out to interview been men who are on
strike or if you're going to be interviewing the Prime Minister,
Boris Johnson, because he's decided to come and visit
Belfast for whatever reason. So literally, umm, it's dictated
by what's happening on the day. Normally, sometimes it's the
news editor in London who say we want you to do this today.
Sometimes it'll be me saying it's a bit quiet today, we need
to go off and do you know something that's going to run in
a couple of days time? There's just a range of
approaches to it and no two days are the same.
Umm, sometimes it's dictated by the fact that I've got something
landing in my inbox from the PS and I saying there's something
happening somewhere or from the ambulance service, the, the fire
service. So we literally are like
ambulance chase sometimes, but it's it's just a range of
approaches but no two days the same.
And are you based? So are you based like in Belfast
and then you've got to cover all of Ireland or how does?
And also I've never seen like a Sky News building.
So do you have your own kind of Sky News building in Belfast?
Well, I suppose the difference between US and BBC Northern
Ireland or UTV is that they have newsrooms here in Belfast.
We have what we call Bureau across the world, Home and
International, which are kind of just Sky News offices.
And we've got an office on the Boucher Rd in Belfast.
We've got an office in Dublin behind the Burlington Hotel at
Burlington Plaza. So for a very long time, it was
just me covering the whole island of Ireland.
But since Brexit came along and we needed to know everything
that the Irish government thought about everything.
And that coincided with the DUP holding the balance of power in
Westminster. And we needed to know for a
while what the DUP thought about everything.
Um, we hired, uh, reporter again, another correspondent in
Dublin. So I've got a colleague in
Dublin with his cameraman, I'm in Belfast with my cameraman and
we've got a producer who manages it all.
So really a small team of about just five of us covering the
whole island out of two offices. Which it, which I never would
have thought because you know, I, I, I, I'll tell you a bit
about it, but I studied journalism for a couple of
years. Really.
Yeah. And before I did, I would have
thought that whenever I see someone say outside, like inside
court report reporting on a story, I would have thought
there was maybe a team of six or seven there.
I would have thought there was camera, there was sound, there
was there was a maybe a production manager.
And then I remember you learn a bit more about it.
And then often these people are just there by themselves,
setting them, setting them all up and nearly, you know, usually
it's two people, but then sometimes just one.
And the, yeah, I just, I just never, I, I always presume that,
you know, any sort of news coverage I see, especially from,
you know, a bit of a big company like Sky is going to have a lot
of people doing it. But it's just funny to me that
you were just one guy covering the whole of Ireland at one
point. I know and it has really, really
changed. You know, when I joined Sky,
that'll be 25 years in February. That's why I'm saying I'm really
old now and doing this for far too long.
But when I joined Sky on big stories in Ireland, we could
have had a team maybe of five or six people, you know, you'd have
had the correspondent, the cameraman, the sound man,
possibly a light man, a producer, and they were all men
in those days as well. It has changed, thankfully.
See that five people out doing the one story and then an editor
back at base. Who's going to edit the pictures
these days? It's like me and one other
person and that one other person does everything.
I mean, people joke about it all the time and they say you're
only as good as your camera crew.
That really is the case because the camera crew is gathering the
pictures, editing the pictures, you know, making sure the
colours right, the signs right. They do all the hard work.
I just did blather in front of the TV.
But like what you do? Oh, I can blather.
I can definitely blather. OK.
But yeah, I mean, I know what you mean.
Like when I put out a sketch, you know, if people say like,
oh, that look great, that's because of someone else.
Like I'm literally just I'm delivering it, but it's somebody
else who is far superior skilled to me in terms of the camera and
the editing and all that kind of thing.
I studied journalism at Belfast Met.
So I had done a filmmaking course and I knew kind of a
probably wanted to do stand up full time at some point, but I
wasn't good enough then to do it.
I wasn't ready to do it. So I thought I could study
journalism because there was there was some stuff that
overlapped the what I was interested in, in terms of
presentation as well, you know, and I just thought, yeah, I
would have an interest in this. And I studied it for about a
year and a half and it just, it just wasn't me because I I
enjoyed, like the sports side of it.
I enjoyed. And I was thinking maybe, maybe
I'll do some sort of sports reporting.
But you know how I imagine it's such a skill to, you know, to
stay impartial to to not react to.
I mean, if I say you're say you're covering a story and, and
something big happens during it live as you report, you know,
Someone Like You is just very good at just, you know,
continuing to be professional and call it like it is.
I'm a reactor like I react. I'm very, I'm very animated and,
and I just think like, you know, I think I would try and sneak
jokes in the news report. Then it just, it just would not
have been fair to let me do to let me do that.
But I have I have so much respect for for journalists
because, you know, I said on the we do Patreon podcast for this,
where I was talking about having you on and I was saying that
journalism is something I respect so much because I mean,
you covered the Omar bomb. That was a story that you were,
you were there for and, and right with that.
And, and we always think of all the emergency services and you
know, as being a job that it must be very hard to switch off
when you get home because of, because of what you've been
around and what you've seen. But I don't think people would
think of journalism like that a lot of the times as well.
But you know, you were there, you were, you were getting first
hand account, you were getting first hand account.
You're seeing things with your own eyes.
So I'd say in a way it must be a lot of a lot of fun as a job,
But there there must be times where it's very, very difficult
to, to, to just continue to do your job whenever, whenever
things are going on around you that would, I imagine it's hard
to speak when you're saying so many things that would leave you
speechless. I'm going to give a shameless
plug for a book that's coming out.
I think it's like maybe just after Christmas?
Not sure it'll be out in time for Christmas.
From two friends of mine, Leona O'Neill and Chris Lindsay, who
are both journalists, have a book coming out called Breaking
and a number of journalists have written a chapter for that book
each. And I've written one of the
chapters and it's about exactly that, the long term impact of
being, you know, first hand witness to some of the most
horrific things that happened here in Northern Ireland.
And that book I think will be well worth reading when it comes
out because it's just exploring all of that.
The Oma Bomb definitely was my hardest day in 30 years of
journalism. It was my longest continuous
live broadcast. I went on there at 5:00 to 5:00
in the afternoon and I didn't come off there until midnight.
Literally just the information coming into my earpiece.
In those days it was, we had faxes, believe it or not, coming
in from the ambulance service. And I'll just never forget that
day. Literally every hour there was
another fax with with a never rising casualty list and
fatality list. So it was a really tough day and
you look back on it and think about it a lot and the people of
Omar are in my heart a lot. They're just amazing, resilient
people. But I have to say this, I also
feel incredibly privileged. Eamonn Holmes often says it
beats working for a living. And I think that's that's right.
We've had this immense privilege of witnessing history first
time, particularly here in this little corner of the world where
we've gone from conflict to fragile peace and to to some
kind of form of power sharing government, even though it's a
bit stop start. And that's that's amazing.
Lots of people go through their career in journalism and never
get to cover that kind of a story even once.
We've got to cover it on a daily basis for so long.
For a while, literally we just kept thinking this is the
culmination. This is the biggest story I'm
ever going to do. You know, whether it's, you
know, the IRA have called a ceasefire.
The IRA have decommissioned their weapons.
Actually there's been a power sharing agreement struck.
What's the Queen's coming to visit Dublin?
I don't believe it. Prince Charles is going to shake
hands with Jerry Adams and visit mullet more where his great
grandfather was was killed by the IRA just every every week it
seemed for a while when you felt you'd reached the pinnacle,
another big story came along. So that's just been amazing.
But you talk about whenever you were studying journalism,
thinking about the crossover between comedy and journalism, I
think there's been a fair bit of crossover between comedy and
journalism in the last four or five years.
Like, who could ever have imagined that we would have the
same period of history? Donald Trump in the White House
and Boris Johnson in #10 Downing St.
You couldn't make it up. I was, I was going to ask you,
whenever you see that Joe Biden's probably going to become
president, is, is there is that, is that bittersweet for
journalists? Because what I mean is it, is
there kind of a as a journalist, A disappointment about Trump,
politics aside, not continuing as president because the circus
isn't there, You know, is it as a journalist, when you look at
that, do you think I'm not bringing politics into it?
But do you think, like if you recover in Washington, for
example, would you be disappointed that Trump was gone
because just because of the the incredible nature of some of the
stories that you would have been covering?
I'm, I've, I've been lucky enough to work out of Washington
on a number of occasions and I'm really disappointed I've not
been able to be there now because of COVID and everything
else. We've a reasonably small team
covering the election. But funny what you just said is
what my son said to me, that he will he will miss waking up
every morning and going what next?
What has he done now? What has he tweeted in caps
today? That that we will miss the
circus, as you put it around all of that.
But yeah, I think there is, if I'm honest, a sense of relief in
most newsrooms because there has been such an attack on the Free
Press from the Oval Office over the last four years.
Yeah, it wouldn't be fair to say that Donald Trump has been a
friend of the press in in recent years.
Has that? Have you working working in
Ireland? Have you felt the effects of
Donald Trump sort of coining that phrase fake news?
Is that something that do you find there is more of a cynicism
towards, by the way, I think fantastic use of a word there.
I really impress myself with that.
But do you think, do you think there's a there's a cynicism
towards or scepticism towards news here because of because of
that? Do you think that's filtered
through the world almost or you think that's just an America?
Oh no, it's not just an America. It's absolutely a global thing.
It's maybe being fueled, hastened about by Donald Trump
winning the White House, but it's been around for for quite a
while and it's all driven by social media more than anything
else. It makes everybody a journalist.
The world's full of citizen journalists and people tweet
stuff or post stuff on Facebook or wherever they post it that
doesn't have to be verified in any shape or form.
And it just amazes me that people don't realise that they
need to Fact Check it in some way that it hasn't been
verified. People talk about mainstream
media. In my view, there is no other.
I hate that term because there's no other term.
There's no other version of the media that is credible in my
opinion. Anybody else can just say what
whatever they like. And it amazes me that people
don't understand stuff like algorithms, that their news feed
is just being filled with stuff that they have, they normally
click on, so stuff that they're likely to click on again.
And the view they already have is being reinforced time and
time again. And they're not being encouraged
to think actually is this is this, right?
But a really good example of it last weekend where the
photographs of Joe Biden with Jerry Adams started circulating.
And everyone was saying, oh, you see, to Joe Biden is a friend of
Irish Republicans. He's a friend of the what we
often used to describe as the political wing of the IRA.
But hang on. I've been around the block a few
times. I know there's a photograph of
Donald Trump with Jerry Adams. And if you really, really want
to drill down into that, there's also a photograph of Prince
Charles with Gerry Adams and there's a photograph of the
Queen with Martin McGuinness. Anybody can play the the dodgy
photograph game if they want to. People just need to step back,
especially on Twitter, especially on social media.
They need to step back and ask one question, what is the
context? Because you very rarely find it
on social media. So it has been tough.
I think it has been tough. Journalists see it's quite a
challenge. Sometimes it's of our own making
because we're not perfect and we make mistakes.
But anybody who thinks she and that there are journalists
sitting around newsrooms reading comics, thinking about what
story can I make up next, has never worked in the television
newsroom or in any newsroom for that matter.
Simply, they don't have time to think about making up stories.
We don't have that level of resources these days.
You're too busy just trying to do the job.
And I will say this honestly, never once in 30 years in this
business has anyone in any proprietor of a newspaper or of
a television station or any producer or director or news
editor put pressure on me to report a story in a particular
way. That is the honest truth.
I simply report what I say. Well, I mean that.
I mean, the whole, the whole idea of, you know, just
dismissing things as fake news, like I'm not on board with that
at all because, you know, I know journalists as well.
I know some journalists really well and, and their integrity
wouldn't be in question to me. But but you're saying that
about, you know, no one would ever put pressure on you to to
report a story in a certain way or or, you know, don't mention
this or whatever that. That surprises me slightly
because I think, you know, I think any news company like the
big newspapers, broadcasters, BBC, I mean, without knowing
anything really about journalism.
And that's me why it didn't pass the course.
I would always think that they're in my mind there.
There's, you know, a guy smoking a cigar in a big suit and he's
very, very fat in all these places.
And he and he basically like he'll come up to your desk and
he'll just the set of the corner of his mouth.
He'll just say, like, make this disappear, you know, so I so
it's obviously not what I think. And I think, you know, news has
probably evolved so much as well, the reporting of news and
the, you know, ownership as well.
But, but I mean, it is easy to to buy into or it is easy to see
so much of, you know, people question in the news.
And like you say, everybody is a journalist now.
Like I've seen some of the worst photos in the run up to this
election. I've seen some of the worst
Photoshop things in my life, such as this picture I saw
recently. And and this person is linked
far too closely to me for this to really be that funny to me.
But it was a picture of George Clooney and Barack Obama on a
speedboat. And in it they had there was a
photo clearly photoshopped, I will say Asian girl in it just
it just on the boat in the picture.
And there was nothing else, no context that was just put up.
And the heading was something like sickos.
Now that to me, I'm looking at that going, how could you not
just take a breath before posting that and see how bad
that Photoshop is? Like you said, Jerry Adams with
a lot of people there. There were these set of photos I
saw during the rounds recently of all like the Clintons and all
these people with Osama bin Laden.
And it was quite clearly not Osama bin Laden.
Like it was Osama bin Laden's head, but the body was like it
just wasn't matching up. You know, it was, it was gear
that Osama bin Laden would not have worn, you know, like in one
like he was wearing a suit. And I was like bin Laden was far
more of just that like a beige kind of, you know, one piece
guy. You know, he wasn't wearing like
shirt and tie. I don't think he liked to keep a
beige and white. It's a question, I suppose, of
how much do you really want to open your heart and mind to
consider a viewpoint that is different than the one you
already have. You know, I've seen it a few
times where friends, even family, as you say, people who
are far too close to you maybe have tweeted you stuff our post
as what's up, you stuff that you, you know, was blatantly
wrong. And you go through the process
of explaining why this is wrong or maybe pulling up the evidence
that this brings. And then you discover that half
an hour later they've passed it on to somebody else.
So they haven't really wanted to discover that it's wrong.
It's kind of this battle. Do do we want to do we want to
learn or do we just want to be right all the time?
Are we really willing open our minds to consider another
alternative? That that's what it's all about
for me. I want to ask you about another
story that I think correct me if I'm wrong, you covered in a lot
of detail which which was Holy Cross.
And maybe for anyone who doesn't know, could you like summarise
that story in case I get it wrong?
That there was a really tense couple of summers, well more
than a couple of tense summers up in north Belfast in our doing
around the marching season and at 1 stage that rolled over into
the beginning of the school term in September.
And because loyalists were frustrated that there had been
difficulties around the Orange March, they decided to protest
against parents who were walking their children to Holy Cross
Girls Catholic Primary School and past the houses where those
loyalists were living. So it was kind of a, if you're
not going to let us March, we're not going to let you walk your
children to school up the street.
And it became really better and really intense for a period of
time. And for 10 days solid of that
protest rage, there were literally the children had to
walk through what I called tunnel of terror where you have
these, you know, I don't think with the PSMI in those days, it
was maybe the RUC still the, the old, umm, uh, Shields in place
around these children to protect them as they walked up up to
school. Umm, and actually you talked a
moment ago about crazy things happening while you were on
there and you weren't quite sure how you'd react to it.
It was during the Holy Cross crisis that a blast bomb
exploded 1 morning was thrown into the middle of the
procession of these parents and their children up to school
while I was talking live on air. So while I was literally live on
camera, a blast bomb exploded about 100 yards behind me.
And I'd no idea what it was, but you just developed, you just
developed this ability to keep talking and not worry about it.
In those days, I used to talk about how we had fantastic
camera crews. They never ran away from the
trouble. They ran towards the trouble.
All I had to do was keep talking.
And that's where I I'll always say that was the easy.
Bit but you say it's the easy bit, but it can't be because you
have to keep talking. But then you have to in that
moment, you know, remain impartial.
And I'm sure there's times covering stories where you want
to say what we're all thinking or you feel that inside, but you
know that you've, you know, you've got to you've got to wear
your journalist hat for it, if you like.
And I just that story in particular must have been a
tough one because like you're, you're a parent.
I think so that that must have I must have been kid myself
whenever that story was it. Would that have been the late
90s? It was 2001. 2000 so I would
have been 13 and I remember being very affected by that
story. And I it's it's very hard to
know why, you know, though I don't know what the rhyme or
reason for it was, but I just remember the feeling so
powerless or somebody. I just felt so bad for those
kids that were, I mean, I was probably school age.
So I probably looked at how easy it was for me going to school.
I went to school with with no problems.
I went to I went up where they went to primary school with the
strand time primary school and I remember thinking school are
some of the best days of your life.
And, and that story in particular I remember really,
really upset me and, and, and looking back on it now,
especially now being a father myself, I just imagine I would
have been a very, very tough undercover.
Yeah. And I think the other thing that
holy, the reason I remember the year so well, by the way, we did
Holy Cross live morning at night, our morning and
afternoon, kids going to school and kids coming home for 10 days
straight, like an hour of live broadcasting for 10 days
straight. And then it suddenly disappeared
off the television. It wasn't there the following
morning. And the reason was because of
9/11, 911 happened in the same week and it obviously there was
only one story in the world, the Twin Towers in New York.
That's how I remember that year so well.
But actually that taught us something as well.
Within I think it was like 2 weeks of the media all decamping
from our doing and pulling out there.
There was an agreement negotiated between the families
and the loyalists who'd done all the protesting.
And it made me consider for a long time how important it is
for the media to be careful that we don't become part of the
problem. We're there to you.
You talk also about, you know, being impartial.
Some people think that's just about balance, that, you know,
if you, it's about just trying to pursue whatever the truth is
and not becoming the story. And I think that's another
danger with social media. And I'm guilty of a journalist
can become the story. Because if someone dares to
challenge me on social media, I find it really hard not to fight
back, even though I'm not really supposed to.
And you've probably seen me engage in those debates that I'm
not supposed to engage in. Yeah, I mean, I'm, look, I'm
under far less scrutiny, but I I have, I do the same all the
time. I put a video out, you see a
comment which you know where someone wants this sort of have
a bit of a Ding Dong and every part of me is saying like just
leave it. You know, you never know what
this person is going through or the reason for them rightness,
But it's it's sometimes it's too easy to just get involved and
and look, you wanna you want to argue your point, You know, you
want to put someone in the place if they feel that they have a
right to do that to you. Let me ask you if you've ever,
have you ever like is there, have you ever made any well
known gaffes? Have you ever had the microphone
on by mistake, you know, sworn by accident or anything like
that? Like have you ever, what stands
out for you? Something where you felt like
you're like, Oh no, I can't believe that happened.
I'm trying to think I'm not. Sure, that's a good sign.
I'm not sure there have been gaffes on air.
There have been gaffes off air, like the moment.
Lots of people will remember two or three years ago when I
thought I was being funny. One day when I noticed you.
You'll remember this when I noticed that Arlene Foster and
Nicola Sturgeon and somebody else was it.
Chasing McGee, my good friend at UTV had all worn the same
jacket, exactly the same jacket over a period of about 3 days.
And I tweeted about, you know, them sharing a wardrobe.
And Nicolas Sturgeon tweeted me back and Oh my, it went, it went
absolutely viral. And I was presented for a, for a
few days as some kind of misogynist.
He was, you know, making comments about women, which was
not the case really. And I, I will say this, Nicolas
Sturgeon was really decent about that.
She, she direct tweeted me that day to say it's OK.
I've not been offended. I realised that it was only a
joke but we'll have some fun with this.
But the, the Scottish first Minister's attempt, our
determination to have some fun with it turned into like a week
of me in the newspapers and being radio interviews and
everything. But I did learn through the
process, never ever comment on a woman's clothes or her hair or
her makeup or anything that description, even if you think
it's funny. Have you, and then let me ask
you, David, if you've, what's the hairiest moment you've had
in, in journalism? Like have you ever been warned
off a story? Have you ever been, you know,
walking to your car and and had a had a run in with someone?
Like, has there been anything you can tell us about that sort
of made the hair stand up in your neck a little bit?
There have been lots of riots, obviously, and you're always
sort of apprehensive in the middle of those situations.
But the thing that stands out probably for me is lots of
people already know, Shane, that I'm from Portadown.
You know, I know you're from Hollywood, of course, and I know
you can claim, you know, Jamie Dornan and Rory McIlroy.
But never forget that we have the queen of Olympics, DM Mary
Peters, former head girl of Portadown College, and the Queen
of broadcasting, Gloria Honeywood.
So don't ever let anyone tell you nothing good.
It never came out of Portadown. But way back in the in the mid
90s, everybody remembers Portadown for one reason.
Drum Cree and the whole battle over the parade along Garvahi
Rd. That was the year, that's the
second year of the Drum Cree dispute, which was the year it
really went fire shipped was the year I joined Sky.
I had been a freelance at Sky for just a few months when this
story landed in my hometown. That was going to run for like
half the summer. And it was a total nightmare
because everybody knew me. Everybody knew where I'd grown
up, what schools I'd gone to, and you know what that means in
Northern Ireland. Everybody was listening to every
word I said. Sky were honoured around the
clock and at one stage it got really hairy.
That's somewhere because it's the only time in my career I
ever remember the police coming to and saying you may want to
leave this earlier because we can no longer guarantee your
safety because 30,000 loyalist protesters had gathered drunk
Grey. So that's probably the scariest
moment because I thought they don't just know who I am, they
know where I live and it's not very far away from here.
But but, but at the end of the day, I and probably probably the
only person from Portadown that ever benefited from the drum
crease standoff because having reported it solidly for like 2
weeks, the then head of news Sky lifted the phone and I was
freelancing. I wasn't in a staff job and he
said do you want a job? So the Orange orders standoff
and drum Cree resulted probably in me doing the job I've been
doing for the last 25 years. David, I'm reading between the
lines here and I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I think
you might have stirred the pot to make Drum Cree happen just so
you could get those orders in Sky.
You've you've got the connections to port it down.
I think you're like laugh if you'll kick off here.
I'm getting the job. Well, it was funny.
All of the other broadcasters and journalists used to
congregate there every summer, as, you know, set up camp and
they'd always be looking for exit strategies.
Where do we go if the if the protest comes this way?
Where do we go if the police come in that way?
And they'll, the answer was always the same as Blevins, you
know, he knows the back streets, he knows the alleyways, he knows
the ways out of this mess. So they always came looking for
me drunk. Drunk in my Mary a lot.
Because it's also probably my funniest moment on air.
I was live on air from Drum Kree one lunchtime, talking to the
lovely Anna Bothing, one of our best presenters on Sky.
And that was the moment, just as I went live, that the Army
decided to rehearse how quickly they could reinforce the
frontline. A Drum Kree and I'm, if you
know, drum Creed, the geography is a bit weird because we're up,
up a hill and then there's a depth and then the church is on
the other side of the hill. So and I'm not very tall.
So to get to get the right perspective, people might have
to stand on a little box so you won't see the church behind you.
So I'm standing on this little box when suddenly these two
Chinook helicopters fly in right over the top of my head and I
was literally blown off the box. So in those test, you have these
two boxes on screen, Amazon, one of them, I'm talking in the
other one and suddenly I just disappear, you know, exit left
to stage off this box and I'm left talking to herself where
the correspondent isn't there. And it was that drunk crazy.
So good memories and bad memories there.
I mean, what is the amongst like, you know, your, your
friends, it's guy and other reporters.
What is the, what is the attitude to reporting in
Northern Ireland? What's it, what's the attitude
to Northern Ireland in general? Is it a place that, you know,
journalists, especially young journalists, would be very keen
to, maybe not as much anymore, but would they have been very
keen to come over here because they knew the sort of things
that were going to cover or were they all trying to steer clear?
I think most of them were keen that have been a few thought I'm
not going anywhere yet most of them were.
King and the BBC particularly used to use Northern Ireland as
a training ground for all of their correspondents.
You used to hear many English accents, even on News Line,
because that's where they were sent to see if they could really
hack the pace. But yeah, a lot of them would
have come over here and we got to know all of the
correspondents because they had their tours of duty in Northern
Ireland. But their visits to Northern
Ireland is also where the phrase Blevins law came from.
There's a there's a special former special adviser called
Peter Cardwell, who's just recently, Peter's just recently
published a book. Yep, on the command to talk
about it. Oh, it'll be.
It'll be great at that. And in that book you'll find
this term Blevins law. He coined that term and it is
roughly defined as. Never underestimate how little
people from England understand the island of Ireland.
That is Blevins law and it's because of some fantastic world
famous correspondents flying in here but live on there saying
things like Belfast's two shipyards, Harland and Wolf are.
In our case, we had a really high flying television news
correspondent at Sky came in to help us once who described Jerry
Evans and Martin McGuinness as, and I wait for it, the big guns
of Sinn Fein. It's like hashtag awkward when
you're live on air. You can't undo it.
There's no recovery from that. So that's having colleagues
coming in from England is always good, but it can be entertaining
as well. That's great.
I'd say a few people spat their tea out when they heard.
That. David, I want to know sort of go
back to the start and let me ask you, you've grown up and put it
down and how did you, how did you get in the news?
I used I can't count. English was always my thing.
So I always thought I would be an English teacher actually.
And then I decided I wouldn't take the crap that I gave most
of my teachers because I was in particularly when I was in
Portland College, I was totally the class clown.
My my friends who went to that school with me at that time,
when I meet them or they message me on social media or whatever
will always say, you know, in the middle of the class, I would
just start commentating on something teacher was doing.
Or I would do a continuity announcement or, you know, bring
them the sports results or the weather forecast, whatever it
was, they just messed around in school.
And I've identical twin brother. You may or may not know that.
I do not know that. Yeah, I have an identical twin
brother. You'll find him on Twitter as
well. He's he's allowed to say more
than I'm allowed to say. And he and I just messed around
seriously in school because he was better at me than me at Mars
and I was better than him at English.
So on the rare occasion where his English class coincided with
my maths class, we used to swap classes.
We did it for a period of time until until we got caught
because the teacher realised he didn't talk enough.
But also I twig that he was only sending me to his English last
on the days that he hadn't done his homework.
And I was taking grief for it. But he, I thought, would end up
being a sports journalist and I would be a teacher.
And ironically he ended up a teacher and then a principal and
now an inspector of schools and I ended up in journalism.
So that's kind of how it came about.
And you know, when I look back on some of my teachers, people
say your teachers know more about you than you know about
yourself. And that's true in in Portadown.
It's the Dixon plan. So you leave primary school, you
go to junior high for three years and then you, you decide
whether you're going to Senior High or or grammar school.
In junior high school in Portadown, one of my teachers in
first year cast me in the role. This is for the Christmas
nativity that cast me in the role of the reporter breaking
news from Bethlehem. When I look back on that, I
think that's kind of weird, you know, that I was the reporter in
the schemativity and then I was actually breaking news for, you
know, millions of people all over the world.
Well, the fact that, I mean, the fact that, you know, your
brother thought, you know, you thought your brother was going
to be a journalist, you were going to be a teacher.
Are you sure that you didn't just switch and then just forget
who's who? Is there a chance that you are
your brother? No, we do look a bit different.
We do look a bit different these days.
He's got a wee beard and all the rest, so people now can't tell
the difference. But he's always been far more
into sport than I am. So, you know, there are there
are ways to tell us apart. And my mother, even though she's
in the early, at least now I can most definitely still tell us
apart. Let me ask you then, what,
what's, what's, what has been your proudest moment of, of your
career of whether it was sky or outside the sky, But what, what,
what was the one moment because you talked about iconic stories
that you reported on that you were there for, but what's been
the one that stands out to you? Or maybe it wasn't on that list.
Has there been one that just top tops everything else for you?
I see I said this earlier that I feel so privileged to have done
and what I've been doing. We've had an incredible story
here in Northern Ireland and, and I know it's all a bit
bonkers and the, you know, the car sharing thing is a battle a
day and we find lots of reasons to criticise and complain about
our politicians. But I remember when it was very,
very different here. I'm, I'm really, I'm really glad
that I've had the opportunity for my children to grow up in a
completely different Northern Ireland to the one I grew up in.
And I think there have just been several moments along the way
that will forever be in my memory.
I was reading the news on downtown radio.
I don't even think Cool FM had come along yet.
It came along during my time at downtown.
But I was reading the news there on the day of the IRA ceasefire.
And I still have the typewritten script at home.
Breaking news. In the last few minutes, the IRA
has declared a complete and unequivocal ceasefire.
Like, Can you imagine what those few words meant for a young
journalist who had grown up in the part of Northern Ireland
that we refer to as the murder triangle?
I knew instantly this, the significance of those words.
And so you don't forget that moment, You don't forget the
Good Friday Agreement. You don't forget the horror of
the the OMA bombing. Journalism has taken me all over
the world. I've reported for Sky in 10
different countries on four different continents.
I've interviewed presidents and prime ministers in.
I've interviewed 2 American presidents and three Irish
presidents and, and, and people often say to me who left, who
left the biggest impression. And I know this sounds like a
cliche, but it is the honest trace.
None of them, none of the the presidents and prime ministers
left the lasting impression. It is just the ordinary people
that you meet in the street. And you'll know this as well
from being out in the street chatting to people.
You know, it's the woman doing her shopping at U Box Pop and
she just comes out with some classic line that goes viral
that day. I love those people.
I love real people who are just going about their daily lives.
They have a far better story to tell than somebody who's locked,
you know, in a corridor apart somewhere.
And do you have aspirations outside of of journalism where
you know, you're talking about Peter there who I know who's
who's released a book and journalism friends of yours?
I've released a book. I mean, I think what you've seen
and covered in the last 25 years here would definitely be worthy
of a book. But is that kind of a route you
want to go down or is there is there any is there like a
curveball you like? Listen, I'm bringing Kenyan
coffee to Northern Ireland. I mean, I think Ken go already
doing it, but you know, you could do better.
I'm not sure. I think I would just love to
retire early. Sometimes I think that I have.
I've seen just about everything there is to see in Northern
Ireland. Nothing would surprise me
anymore and I think I would love to retire early and go and chill
out on the North Coast or somewhere are going by a house
in the mornings are going. Just relax a bit and keep
travelling the world. I absolutely love travelling and
one of the things that I've got to do in the last few years is
to talk to journalism students at universities across America
because they're absolutely obsessed with the Northern.
Ireland. Process.
They want to know about the role the media played in the peace
process. And I think I've talked in like
something like 20 different colleges and 15 different states
now over the last three or four years, which is an amazing
thing. And I might do a little bit more
of that, although I always come home and Ruth, that's my wife,
she'll always say, how did you get on?
And I folks got the same answer. It was brilliant because
literally you could stand up at the front of the class and
recite Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall and they'll give you a
standing ovation. But if you talk with this weird
accent, that's that's enough for them.
How do you think I feel in the comedy clubs it's the same
thing. I love it.
I love that. So maybe a bit, maybe a bit of
that, maybe a bit of that. I've no aspiration really to
write a book. I'm too lazy to do that.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, it must be a great
job. It must be a great job to to
present for, you know, Sky News who who are huge, such a big
player as well. Because, you know, I'm sure
there's great journalists who just don't get an opportunity
to, to, to, to get so much coverage and, and to be, to have
such a, such a, such a good job within, within journalism.
And let, let me ask you this question of obviously no.
And I and I, I have witnessed it as well known, aren't changed so
much. And the years you've been,
you've been covering here, what, what do you think Northern
Ireland is going to be like in 10 years, for example?
And you know more, you know more than most people.
So the way politics is going, the way with Brexit, how do you
see Northern Ireland changing in the next 5?
I know it's a very, very difficult question, but in the
next 5 or 10 years, is there anything you can you can
foresee? I'll be really careful how I
answer this because I don't want to give you a political answer,
but the head of home used Sky puts it really well.
Peter always says never take your eyes off Northern Ireland.
The moment you think the story is over there, something will
come along. You know, we thought the story
was over with the the peace process and then the dissidents
came along and you had things like Omar.
We thought this story was over after Omar and they got the
devolved government up and running properly and
decommissioning and all the rest.
And then the next big story comes along, which is all those
historic milestones when the queen visits and Charles visits
and all of that. I think we really thought it had
come to a successful conclusion and Northern Ireland was going
to become a kind of postage stamp in history and the rest of
the world would move on after 911 and there would be the
national news would really dominate.
And then completely out of the blue, what happens?
Brexit, there's only one story around Brexit that has dominated
the news for the last five years or the last four years, and that
is the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
So yet again, this tiny little corner of the world is front
page news all over the world. I mean, the New York Post, you
read stories about the the Northern Irish border, you go to
Brussels, you read stories about the Northern Irish border.
And again, I'm thinking, well, that's going to come to an end.
At some point it's going to they're going to have to decide,
is there a deal? Is there not a deal?
And then we get COVID and there's a whole debate going on
about, well, should we be taking our lead from London?
Should we be taking our lead from Dublin?
And again, the whole sort of question about Northern Ireland
is on the table. I suppose my hope is that
Northern Ireland will become less and less of an
international news story in the sense of hard news, but that it
will realise it's it's potential because this place is absolutely
amazing. I have travelled all over the
world but I love to come home to Northern Ireland.
We've gone from producing ships to producing world class
television drama like Game of Thrones.
You know it's. Previously.
Exactly. It's it's a fantastic tiny
little place that punches way above its weight.
I mean, think about it, George Best, Liam Neeson, what what you
could, the list goes on forever and ever.
And I would just love to see it achieve its real potential with
people flooding into this place to, you know, go to the North
Coast and play golf or whatever, whatever the case is.
David, I've loved chatting to you so much.
Thanks very much for taking the time and sitting down with me.
And I really think you should write a book or I don't know,
maybe you should have a podcast or you just just those stories,
honestly, like. Can I say two things before I
go? Can I say two things?
You talked a moment ago about how many journalists don't get
the chance to do this. I really want to say something
to young journalists who who think, who are often told these
days that you've missed the golden age of journalism.
You know, newspapers are dying, television rolling, news is
dying. It's all about digital,
whatever. I don't believe that because I
think the technology today creates the potential for this
to be the golden age of, of journalism.
If we can take the old principles of journalism and
apply them to the new technology, I really want young
people to realise that this could be the golden age of
journalism. Don't, don't give up on this
business. It's a fantastic career choice.
And the other thing is, I want to say to them is you just never
really, honestly, never know, uh, how good it can be.
Nobody gets to see life behind the scenes and the crack is
mighty behind the scenes. Want to finish with a story
about George Best's funeral on the morning of George Best's
funeral, where the world had its eyes on Belfast to such an
extent that Kay Burley, who's a good friend of mine, was
anchoring the news from Northern Ireland that morning.
And I was what was called the presenter's friend, which is the
correspondent who stands alongside to give you somebody
to talk to. And just we're standing about to
go on air at 6:00 in the morning and at one minute to six, you
know, I hear that producer in London say, you know, one minute
to air or whatever. And we didn't have rain that
morning. We had total monsoon and water
got into one of the fuses in the outside broadcast vehicle and
suddenly everything died. The cameras, the microphones,
the lights, caves, all the everything just died.
And I don't know to this day how he did it.
But the engineer knew which fuse had blown, jumped out of the
truck, ran around the back, put the new fuse in, got back into
his seat and in my ear and make the complete pandemonium on the
step. People running in all
directions. In my ear, everything springs to
life and I hear the producer in London go 3, 21K looked straight
and into the lens and said a very good morning.
This is sunrise live from Belfast.
The consulate professional that she is.
And if anybody knew the pandemonium on that set 3
seconds earlier, they they would not have they would not have
believed it. So there's there's great fun and
I would say to young people you know, find find whatever excites
you about journalism, find your views and and keep her lip, as
we say in County Armagh. Well, David, I, I wish you'd
been a lecturer on my journalism, of course, because
maybe I wouldn't have dropped out with three months to go and
I still have student debt from that.
But don't worry about it. Yeah, David, thanks so much.
Really, really appreciate it. My pleasure.