Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast from BBC Radio 4. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. For rights reasons, the music's shorter than on the original broadcast, but you can find a version with longer music tracks on BBC Sounds.
Listeners will also get access to episodes 28 days earlier than everyone else. I hope you enjoy listening.
Thank you.
My castaway this week is the journalist Gary O'Donoghue. He's the chief North America correspondent for BBC News. Last year, his coverage of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, conducted live as the incident unfolded, won the Royal Television Society Breaking News Award.
His interview with an eyewitness, which was rebroadcast by every major news network, was watched by more than 300 million people on social media and nominated for an Emmy. Viewers were impressed by his journalistic skills and by the fact that he was covering an event he could not actually see. Gary is blind. In fact, he's the first disabled person to be posted as a BBC foreign correspondent.
During his career, he's reported on mass shootings, filed stories from the Macedonian border during the Kosovo conflict, covered the Iraq war and chronicled seven British general elections. He was born in London, where his dad worked as a black cab driver. When Gary lost his sight aged eight, support was limited, but his parents were determined that he would succeed.
They got him a place at a boarding school for blind children, and he went on to study philosophy and modern languages at Oxford. He spent a year at the Sorbonne in Paris, where he took his first steps into journalism, filing pieces for Radio 4's In Touch. He says, Gary O'Donoghue, welcome to Desert Island Discs.
Thank you for having me.
Well, Gary, you're a very busy man, so I'm glad that you've got time to see us. You have, let's say, a hectic journalistic beat. We're speaking in April and I think plenty of listeners at home will be struggling to keep up with American politics right now. How are you finding it?
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Chapter 2: What are Gary O'Donoghue's notable achievements as a journalist?
What I'm trying to do the whole time when I'm broadcasting or writing, you know, I'm trying to give them not just an analysis or the news or whatever. I'm trying to give them a bit of me because that's how you get them to trust you. They feel they know you.
You talk about journalism as a very good fit for blind people. Tell me a bit more about that. Why?
One of the things you have to do as someone who can't see, who's blind, is right from a very early age, actually, you have to learn to listen. You sort of have to learn to understand other people's reactions because they react differently to you as a disabled person. And you learn to put yourself inside their head a bit and know when that sort of thing is going on.
And so I think that means you're outside yourself, you know, quite a lot of the time. And there's also, you know, in maybe slightly more stressful circumstances when people might not necessarily want you around, it can be harder to, you know, shut the door in the face of a blind bloke who's a reporter.
So if you're doorstepping someone, you're at an advantage? Maybe. Now, it's not just journalism that we're talking about today, Gary. You're, of course, sharing your music with us. Tell us about your first disc today.
Well, I'm pretty sure this was the first single I ever bought. But I think when I started listening to music or becoming aware of it at sort of six, seven, eight, I didn't really like what was around very much. I kind of hated disco. Although, ironically, there is a disco track in one of the ones I've suggested.
It's a broad mix today, Gary. I've had a sneak peek.
There are reasons. But suddenly there was this kind of new music around, well, punk basically, and a new wave. And this came along and I brought the single and I remember taking it to school and forcing one of the teachers to play it in the classroom.
Was it your French teacher? Yeah.
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Chapter 3: How did losing his sight at a young age impact Gary's life?
He had been a semi-pro footballer.
In his teenage years, he was a pretty accomplished footballer and played for various teams around the South East, I think into his 20s.
What kind of teams did he play for?
Well, he had some trials at some quite big teams like Watford and Chelsea and places like that, but he ended up playing in a non-league kind of... Eastbourne and I think Hastings and Whitstable and places like that. He was a midfielder and his great talent was that he could kick equally well with both feet, which many Premier League footballers nowadays can't do.
Oh, wow. And do you think he could have gone all the way in different circumstances?
Who knows? And he never showed any resentment or anything. And eventually he became a cab driver. But he did used to take me to Tottenham from when I was very little, mainly because a lot of his mates, who were also cab drivers, were tickets outs at Spurs at the weekend. And so we could get tickets pretty easily and they'd keep some back for us.
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Chapter 4: What experiences shaped Gary's early career in journalism?
But the first game he took me to, the old White Hart Lane, was against the Arsenal and we got walloped 5-0. But he knew the assistant manager, who was also a former cab driver, who got us down to the dressing room afterwards. I mean, I think I was probably seven or eight at the time, maybe a little older, but... I got to meet some of the players and stuff like that, which was it was lovely.
I remember distinctly one of them patting me on the head and saying, sorry, we lost your son.
I mean, your mum and dad sound wonderful. Tell me about their personalities. What kind of people were they?
They were very tolerant. They were hardworking. My dad worked nights most of the time. My mum, when she sort of gave up dancing and had a family, then sort of spent a lot of time working in bars and shops and things like that. And they were incredibly patient. They were great parents.
So when your dad was training to become a cabbie, he would have done the knowledge. Do you remember that? Was that before your time?
That was before I was born. Although, funnily enough, when I was growing up, he would sort of offload some of this knowledge to me. So when we were driving around in London and going to see my grandparents or whatever, he would tell me where we were and which road led to which road. And then he would ask me, you know, test me. How would you go from this place to this place?
And so I have this sort of still to this day, I have this knowledge that runs from sort of Camden in the north to the river and in the south. And then kind of the city in the east, probably as far as Notting Hill in the west, where I kind of pretty much know where things are.
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Chapter 5: What insights does Gary share about covering American politics?
So you have this mental map of London.
A bit of a mental map that passed on.
All right, Gary, let's have some more music. This is your second choice today. Tell me about this disc.
So, I mean, I was born in North London, but, you know, I grew up in Essex, you know, until I was sent away to school. And quite early on, I think through my elder brother, Stephen, I started listening to Ian Dury, who's sort of quintessential Essex. He wrote a song called Billericcy Dicky. And I remember on the day of the royal wedding in 1981, Princess Dime, Prince Charles...
The GLC, London Council, was putting on this alternative event where Ian Drury was headlining, and I begged my parents to go, and they wouldn't let me. They made me sit at home and watch The Royal Wedding instead. But the song I've actually chosen from him is a sort of gentler, what I would regard as sort of a bit of a poking fun at Essex and the kind of ways of Essex, and it's Clever Trevor.
You ain't got no call not to think of what I'm falling to thinking I ain't too clever And it ain't not having one thing nor not another either neither is it anything whatever And it's not not knowing that there ain't nothing showing and no answer to the name
Clever Trevor, Ian Durie. So, Gary O'Donoghue, tell me a bit more about growing up and specifically your sight, because you had problems from birth, didn't you? What was the condition that you had called?
No one knows. I think there was some sort of speculation that maybe my mother had had German measles or something when she was pregnant, but no one really knows. And one of my eyes, they took one of my eyes out when I was a baby. I spent quite a lot of time in hospital when I was a baby, which... you know, a huge burden for my parents.
But I could see a bit, you know, I was sort of partially sighted, and so I could see out of one eye, and I could see enough to ride a bike. But it was pretty unstable, and when I was five, I fell off my bike and detached the retina and had to have that fixed. And then when I was, in fact, it was the day before my eighth birthday, I have a very clear memory of walking.
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Chapter 6: What was the experience of interviewing Donald Trump like for Gary?
And one of his speakers was the Pet Shop Boys, and so I've chosen West End Girls.
MUSIC PLAYS In a western town, a dead-end world. The Eastern Boys and Western Girls. West End Girls.
Perch Up Boys and West End Girls. Gary O'Donoghue, after you lost your sight, your parents sent you to a boarding school for blind and partially sighted children in Kent. What do you remember about that time?
I remember the day we went, and they took me on a Sunday, and I remember on all, you know, the whole journey telling them I wasn't going to do it and they might as well turn around now. I think I felt slightly like I was being punished for losing my sight a bit. I mean, that's obviously not what they were doing.
And they were just silent in the front of the car because I knew this was, well, I know now this must have been tearing them apart as well.
Oh, God.
You know, and I went and this is this sort of big old former manor house in the middle of these sort of huge grounds. And the way up to the dormitories was the old servant staircase up 52 stone steps.
How old were you at this point?
So I was eight. So this was six months after I'd lost my son.
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Chapter 7: How does Gary navigate the challenges of reporting as a blind journalist?
Not long for them, not long for you.
No, not long at all. And they, you know, my mother said that, you know, she could hear me bawling my eyes out as she walked down the stairs. And that must have been hugely hard for them. I mean, hugely hard.
And so you were desperate, you were homesick, were you?
I was really, well, I think I was homesick. I think I adapted pretty quickly. I mean, it was a huge change. I mean...
Chapter 8: How has Gary's personal life influenced his professional journey?
It was a working class background I'd come from. And these schools of blind children in those days, you know, they were modelled on the English public school system.
So culturally, just like a complete culture shock as well.
Complete culture shock.
Tell me about that. What kind of thing?
How would you describe it? Sort of things like... The stories they would read us were all kind of, you know, Jennings goes to school. And we had houses that we were in, you know, and it was quite regimented. And I mean, there was still corporal punishment. You know, I got hit at one point.
And in those days, the sort of pastoral care in those sorts of schools was very much secondary to the academic stuff. But there were good things about those early years as well. I mean, you know, I learned to ski at that school. You know, my parents scraped the money together to allow me to go on a skiing trip to Austria and Germany. That was completely out of the realms of anything.
Right. So what was that like then? Because as well, you were a weekly boarder. So you're going home at the weekends, like talking about skiing and speaking French, which you ended up being very good at. I mean, how was all of that? How did that affect the family dynamics?
you sort of become a different person and you grow apart a bit. I mean, from 11 years old onwards.
And was that when you went to Worcester College?
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