Newscaster Trevor McDonald was the first black person to become a familiar face on British television. Now he's using his profile to draw attention to a homeless charity, he tells MARK HENNESSY, London Editor
KNOWN AS the avuncular face of ITN's News at Tenfor nearly 20 years, Sir Trevor McDonald first began to notice the plight of the homeless as he came home late every night from the television studios.
Night after night, McDonald, an energetic 72-year-old, watched people huddled in doorways: "My observations about homelessness, I am afraid to say, were from the back of a rather comfortable car being driven home after News at Ten.
“I watched people sleeping rough and I thought, especially when the weather turned past autumn, ‘My goodness, how do people manage this existence?’,” he says, sitting in a Richmond hotel near his West London home.
In 1989, in a move, he says, that “strangely coincided” with his nascent thoughts about homelessness, the Trinidadian-born newscaster was asked to become the public face of homeless charity Depaul.
"When I got a chance to do a little bit of work with Depaul I jumped at it," says McDonald, who has become more involved in the years since he retired from News at Tenin 2008.
Though he still does some occasional television work, McDonald is glad he’s not in front of the camera as North Africa and the Middle East are engulfed by crisis and revolution.
“God, no. I used to be desperately, desperately worried [about retirement] when I was at the coal-face thinking, ‘How is one going to survive without the daily dose of news-induced adrenalin.’ The answer is: terribly, terribly well.
“If I have any criticism of retirement it is that I watch too much sport on TV. And there is too much sport on TV: cricket, golf, tennis, football,” says the UK’s most decorated broadcaster, who religiously follows Tottenham Hotspur.
During his career, McDonald, the first black face to become familiar to British news viewers, covered the major international stories of the time – from Northern Ireland to the overthrow of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines.
Ireland has happy memories, particularly a night spent in the Embankment in Tallaght watching the late Anna Manahan: “A wonderful night of culture, with no concessions made. Culture and rolled-up sleeves, just as it should be.”
In 1974, he covered the first of the art robberies at Russborough House in Co Wicklow: “We heard that the Garda were storing the pictures that they had found in a place, but nobody could get pictures.
“We went there and all the guards were listening to the radio. I didn’t know what they were listening to, but it turned out to be the All-Ireland Final. Paddy Barron, the cameraman, told me to keep asking to be let in. And they did, eventually, just to get rid of us.”
This weekend, he will be in Belfast to host an old-style variety show in the City Hall to raise funds for Depaul, following an event in Dublin, to mark the charity’s 10 years in Ireland.
Depaul offers 303 beds every night to the homeless in Ireland. It is also amalgamating a daycare centre in Derry and another offering accommodation in Dublin into its operations.
Some of its services are unique, including the “wet services”, Sundial House on Dublin’s James’s Street, and Stella Maris in Belfast, which house alcoholic homeless people unable to give up their dependency.
Another service in Dublin helps recently-released women prisoners.
McDonald says of Stella Maris: “It is a wonderful place, and there are some really great characters there. It isn’t a straight line towards salvation, but people do improve their lives.
“One man told me, almost in tears, that it was the first time that somebody had taken an interest in him. The curious thing about it is that the atmosphere is surprisingly upbeat. I don’t quite know how to describe it: how pleased the people seem to be to be there.”
Photographs of the visit, showing McDonald serving chips, still line Stella Maris’ walls.
Although the charity does not offer “an eternal home”, in most cases, such as at the James’s Street centre, people are given a key to the door. “It is meant to give them the skills, the wherewithal and also comfort and understanding,” says McDonald.
INVITED BY THE Government to come to the Ireland in 2001, the charity, which is mostly funded by the State, has helped nearly 6,000 people in the decade since. A further 1,000 people have used the service in Northern Ireland, says Depaul Ireland chief executive Kerry Anthony.
In McDonald’s eyes, Depaul “rather brilliantly sees the connections” between homelessness and issues such as alcoholism, drug abuse and family breakdown that can lead people to a life on the streets.
“We are prepared to give people time. There is no rule that says that you must leave after a certain time. There are some who you know will take a very, very long time to be reintegrated into society.
“We don’t drop them because of this. We find a place for them. There are others who will benefit from getting a chance to get back into wider society. We do everything to encourage that, and there are some rather shining examples of people who have made the transition,” he says.
Often, the charity manages to prevent homelessness, putting structure into a life heading for destruction, rather than offering miraculous cures, but there have been clear successes, too, says the broadcaster.
One day, while still working in ITN, he received a call from someone on behalf of a woman who said that she had met him once at a Depaul centre while she living on the streets, and who wanted to speak with him again.
“They came to tell me that she had got a job at Buckingham Palace. I forget what job it was, but I was so overwhelmed that this had worked and that they had been so nice to think of coming to tell me.
“It is a good example of what can be done. It also speaks to my kind of personal belief about these kinds of things; we all need assistance at some stage of our lives. Some of us are lucky to get it. Others don’t, and fall through the net.
Society is not civilised unless it reaches out to people who can’t fend for themselves, McDonald says.
