Gary O'Donoghue

Presenter0:00

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.

Presenter0:49

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 Being blind is absolutely and undeniably a part of who I am, but it's not all of me.

Presenter2:11

Gary O'Donoghue, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

Gary O'Donoghue2:14

Thank you for having me.

Presenter2:15

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?

Gary O'Donoghue2:30

Well, I share their frustration because we struggle, I struggle day to day to keep up. The pace of what is unfolding in the US and around the world is mind-boggling and mind-blowing. And our job, my job, to try and interpret that and make sense of that and sort of impose some kind of rationality or structure on it is a day-to-day challenge. It's hugely hard. All the rules in politics have changed in the last few years. The politically impossible has become possible. All sorts of things have been turned on their head. And we're all day by day struggling to try and keep up.

Presenter3:08

And the personalities, I mean, we have such an unpredictable precedent right now.

Gary O'Donoghue3:13

We do, and he has rewritten the rules of politics. He has the ability to, you know, shock day by day and does so. And because he's the most powerful man in the world, we have to report that. And that upsets a lot of people. But he is the most powerful man in the world. He has been elected. So we have to sort of respect that mandate, even if it's hard at times to understand what he's trying to, you know, achieve. And I'm one of those people that believes that if you don't know, if you're not sure, then say so. You know, I've been on air and said, I don't know, I'm not sure. I don't really understand this. And I think audiences do appreciate that. What I'm trying to do the whole time when I'm broadcasting or writing, 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.

Presenter4:04

Mm-hmm.

Gary O'Donoghue4:05

Because that's how you get them to trust you, if they feel they know you.

Presenter4:09

You talk about journalism as a very good fit for blind people. Tell me a bit more about that. Why?

Gary O'Donoghue4:16

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 quite a lot of the time. And there's also, in maybe slightly more stressful circumstances when people might not necessarily want you around, it can be harder to shut the door in the face of a blind bloke who's a reporter.

Presenter4:57

So if you're doorstep in someone, you're at an advantage.

Presenter5:02

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.

Gary O'Donoghue5:10

Well, I'm pretty sure this was the first single I ever bought. But when I s 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 and although there ironically there is a disco track in one of them.

Presenter5:25

It's a broad mix today, Gary. I've had a big tea.

Gary O'Donoghue5:26

It's a very simple

Gary O'Donoghue5:28

There are reasons. 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, the classroom record.

Presenter5:44

Was he your French teacher?

Gary O'Donoghue5:45

It was my French teacher and I asked her to translate it but she refused to. I didn't know whether she could or couldn't or wouldn't but she wouldn't translate it. Anyway, so this has a sort of a very special sort of place in my memory. It's Saplain Pour Mar by Plastic Bertram.

Speaker 46:01

Hurry up, Amatan, in the luck that new checks mois poupé de ceils fanchre virginois. Aspara la in girl de bois.

Speaker 46:15

The manager also includes

Speaker 46:18

Sa plan bour moi.

Speaker 46:21

Safland Buma.

Speaker 46:24

Sab Dran Boom Wah Wah Wah Wah Wah Sab Dran Boom Wah.

Presenter6:30

Saplan Pourmoi, Plastic Bertrand. Gary O'Donoghue, you were born in North London in 1968 and you grew up in Hornchurch in Essex, and your parents, Connie and Frank, both had big passions outside family life. Let's talk about your mum first. Before she got married, she taught ballroom dancing, didn't she?

Gary O'Donoghue6:48

She did. My mum and dad both left school at 14 and my mother went to a dancing school, boreham dancing school and did loads of all her qualifications and was completely qualified by I think the age of 21 and used to sort of effectively, when the owners were away, run this quite well-known boreham dancing school in North London called Morgan's. And that's where she met my father because he was one of her pupils. And in fact, that's where one of her sisters also met her husband.

Presenter7:16

Very successful in the world.

Gary O'Donoghue7:17

Well it's also

Presenter7:20

So, what did she tell you about meeting your dad then? What kind of impression did he make? He must have been a good dancer, too.

Gary O'Donoghue7:25

To be honest, she was always quite critical of his dancing. I think there I remember her telling me there was a sort of policeman. She slightly fancied a bit more than him, but but um but they ended up um together. I think he had an incredible sense of humour, my father. And um

Presenter7:40

And

Gary O'Donoghue7:41

He was always larking around and I think that captured her captured her heart eventually.

Presenter7:46

And what about your dad? He had been a semi pro footballer.

Gary O'Donoghue7:50

In his teenage years, he was a pretty accomplished footballer and played for various teams around the southeast, I think, into his 20s.

Presenter7:59

What kind of teams who did he play for?

Gary O'Donoghue8:01

Well he had some trials at some quite big teams like Watford and Chelsea and places like that but he ended up playing in like 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.

Presenter8:23

Oh wow. And do you think he could have gone all the way in different circumstances?

Gary O'Donoghue8:27

And I don't he never showed any resentment or anything.

Gary O'Donoghue8:31

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 ticket outs at Spurs at the weekend. And so we could get tickets pretty easily and they'd keep some back for us. But the first game he took me to at the old Whiteheart Lane was against the Arsenal and we got walloped 5-0. But he knew the assistant manager who'd happened to be 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 lovely. I remember distinctly one of them patting me on the head and saying, sorry we lost for your son.

Speaker 29:06

Mm-hmm.

Presenter9:18

I mean, your mum and dad sound wonderful. Tell me about their personalities. What kind of people were they?

Gary O'Donoghue9:24

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 spend a lot of time working in bars and shops and things like that. And they were incredibly patient. They were great parents.

Presenter9:44

So when your dad was training to become a cabby, he would have done the knowledge. Do you do you remember that? Was that before your time?

Gary O'Donoghue9:50

That was before I was born. Although, funny enough, you know, when I was growing up, he would sort of offload some of this knowledge to me. So, when we were driving around in London, 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, well, 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.

Presenter10:29

So you have this mental map of London.

Gary O'Donoghue10:31

A bit of a metal map that passed on.

Presenter10:33

Alright Gary, let's have some more music. This is your second choice today. Tell me about this disc.

Gary O'Donoghue10:38

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 Billeriki Dicky. And I remember on the day of the royal wedding in 1981, Princess Diane, Prince Charles, the GLC, London Council, was putting on this alternative event where Ian Dury was headlining. I begged my parents to go and they wouldn't let me. 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 its clever trepper.

Speaker 211:11

Uh

Speaker 411:28

You ain't got no call not to think of what I'm falling to thinking I ain't too

Speaker 411:34

Clever.

Speaker 411:38

And it ain't not having one thing, no, not another either, neither is it anything

Speaker 411:44

Whatever

Speaker 411:49

And it's not not knowing that there ain't nothing showing and no answer to the name

Speaker 411:54

Of Trevor

Presenter11:58

Clever Trevor, Ian Jury.

Presenter12:01

So Gary O'Donoghue, tell me a bit more about growing up and specifically your site, because you had problems from birth, didn't you? What was the condition that you had called?

Gary O'Donoghue12:11

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, 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 a 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 walk, I was at a partial school for the partially sighted day school. And I remember walking out into the playground after lunch, and I think I was the first one out there. And I climbed the climbing frame and I couldn't see the way down.

Presenter12:18

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 412:44

Yeah.

Speaker 212:44

Mm-hmm.

Gary O'Donoghue12:59

And I thought, okay, there's something's wrong here. And they'd bought me this, I never forget, they bought me this sort of action man doll, right? Ironically enough, the six million dollar man with his bionic eye, right? And I'm in the kitchen trying to stare through this little hole in the back of this doll's head, trying to persuade my parents I really can see something still. But I went to the hospital and I was there for another few weeks. And eventually the consultant I'd had from birth, famous ophthalmologist called Greaves, he sat my mother down and said, look, it's over. He's not going to be able to see you ever again. And.

Speaker 212:59

That's what I

Speaker 213:00

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 213:19

Boom.

Gary O'Donoghue13:40

He said straight away after that, he said, he's not going to see again. And the thing you must do right now is make sure he gets the best education that he can possibly get.

Presenter13:51

Mm. And that's exactly what your mum and dad did.

Presenter13:54

That must have been so difficult to have that conversation with your consultant from their perspective. And you said it was just your mum at first, I think.

Gary O'Donoghue14:02

Yeah. Yeah. There was no support in those days at all.

Presenter14:03

Yeah.

Gary O'Donoghue14:06

My mother told me that at one point when they'd made an artificial eye for me, the nurse couldn't manage to put it in, so she wrapped it in a tissue and said, You try when you get home.

Gary O'Donoghue14:18

Yeah, off you go. And later in life, um my mother actually said to me, There was a point in those early years where, you know, she considered killing us both.

Speaker 214:18

So yeah.

Presenter14:18

Yeah, off you go.

Gary O'Donoghue14:30

Oh my gosh.

Presenter14:31

Um

Gary O'Donoghue14:33

I was so touched actually that she told me that, the courage to tell me that and trusted me enough to tell me that because I kind of I got it, you know. I could understand it made me understand how lonely it must have been for her and and my father.

Presenter14:35

Yeah.

Speaker 414:36

Yeah.

Speaker 414:38

Uh

Presenter14:38

Yeah.

Presenter14:45

And the sense of desperation that she would have s had, as you say, with no support around her, really unsure what the future held, you know, all of that.

Gary O'Donoghue14:53

Please.

Gary O'Donoghue14:54

I think I sort of understood that they were worried for me and I think you know I was obviously I must have been a bit anxious because I remember trying to run away from home a couple of times and sort of I told my mum I was going to her mother's, my nan's.

Presenter15:06

Where did you go?

Presenter15:10

Where did she live?

Gary O'Donoghue15:10

Where did she live? She lived up in Kentish town and I would apparently pack a bag that contained only three things, which was a pair of underpants, a toothbrush and a toy car. That was a lot. And my mother would laxh she'd actually let me go. She'd let me walk up the street and follow me. And, you know, when I lost my bottle before the top of the street, she'd be there.

Presenter15:28

Hmm.

Presenter15:33

Mm-hmm.

Presenter15:35

Let's take a minute for some music. What are we going to hear?

Gary O'Donoghue15:38

The best friend I ever had.

Gary O'Donoghue15:40

was a guy called Tim, Tim Gebbles. And we first met when I was sent away to school at eight and we went through two schools together, we went through university together and in our adult life we talked all the time, we met up all the time and he he knew me better than anyone.

Presenter16:02

He was blind too, wasn't he?

Gary O'Donoghue16:03

He was blind too, and we talked about everything, and he was loyal and honest, and then.

Gary O'Donoghue16:13

And then he died nine years ago. And he got diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and three months later, he was dead. And not a day goes by that.

Speaker 216:20

Yeah.

Presenter16:26

Yeah.

Gary O'Donoghue16:27

and I don't have anyone to talk to any more.

Presenter16:30

And this this is a track that you've chosen for him, in his memory.

Gary O'Donoghue16:33

Yes, this is for him. We were at the same university in different colleges, and he was a big fan of this band. And when I went around to sat in his room and drank the Queen's College Sherry, which was actually quite nice, he'd play this and we would agonise about all the girls we weren't getting. We would sit and I remember us sitting and write, you know, helping one another write love letters to the latest crush and things like that.

Speaker 216:48

Yeah.

Gary O'Donoghue17:04

And on his, you know, of his speakers was the pet shop boys and so I've chosen West End Girls.

Speaker 417:13

There's a madman around running down, underground, to a dive bar, in a western town In a Western town, a dandy road

Speaker 217:18

Oh, what's

Speaker 417:21

But Eastern Barise and Western go

Speaker 417:26

In a western town, the dead end world

Speaker 417:30

The Eastern Boys and Western Girls.

Speaker 417:34

West and Google

Presenter17:41

Petchop 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?

Gary O'Donoghue17:53

I remember the day we went on 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. You know and I went and this is a sort of big old former manor house in the middle of these sort of huge grounds and the way up to the the dormitories was the the old servant staircase up 52 stone steps.

Speaker 218:08

Uh

Presenter18:31

How old are you at this point?

Gary O'Donoghue18:32

So I was eight. So this was six months after I'd lost myself.

Presenter18:33

So it was only six months after, because that's not long, is it? Not long for them, not long for you.

Gary O'Donoghue18:36

Yeah.

Gary O'Donoghue18:39

No, not long at all. And

Gary O'Donoghue18:41

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.

Presenter18:51

But

Gary O'Donoghue18:51

Yeah.

Presenter18:51

So you were you were desperate, you were homesick, were you?

Gary O'Donoghue18:54

I was really well, I think I was home sick. I think I adapted pretty quickly. I mean, it was a huge change. I mean, it was a working class background I'd come from. And these schools for blind children in those days were you know, they were modelled on the English public school system.

Presenter19:09

So culturally, just like a complete culture shock as well.

Gary O'Donoghue19:12

Culture shock.

Presenter19:13

Tell me about that. What what kind of thing? How would you describe it?

Gary O'Donoghue19:15

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 learnt to ski at that school. You know, my parents scraped the money together to allow me to go on a skiing trip to Austria.

Speaker 219:25

Mm-hmm.

Gary O'Donoghue19:52

You know, that was completely out of...

Presenter19:54

It's a realm.

Gary O'Donoghue19:54

The realms of anything.

Presenter19:55

Right. So what was that like then? Because as well, you're 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 how was all of that? Did how did that affect the family dynamics?

Gary O'Donoghue20:09

You sort of become a different person and you grow apart a bit. I mean, from 11 years old onwards.

Presenter20:16

And was that when you went to Worcester College?

Gary O'Donoghue20:17

That was when I went to the the hothouse of Worcester College, which was a you know massive grammar school for blind boys. It was sort of it was two lives really. I'd come back at the weekend or you know

Presenter20:27

Okay, so they call that code switching now, I think. That's what it is. Yeah, so you were sort of one person at school and then. Of course, my accent changed.

Gary O'Donoghue20:29

It's already easy.

Gary O'Donoghue20:33

And of course my accent changed. I went from the kind of Essex estuary to this place where everyone who'd come from different parts of the country then we all sounded the same at the end of the first year.

Presenter20:43

Yeah. So did your relationship with Stephen and Andrew, your brothers, change?

Gary O'Donoghue20:50

I think so. I mean I think you know they probably suffered quite a lot from the amount of time my parents had to spend looking after me when I was having all my sight problems and spending loads of time in hospital. And certainly when I went into school I really didn't see them very much. And so you know we've we've obviously stayed together and we still talk you know but I don't feel like I've ever really known them.

Presenter21:15

And have you had that conversation about what they went through? Because it is very hard on the other siblings when one child in a family has health problems, they obviously become the focus. But it's difficult for the siblings for sure.

Gary O'Donoghue21:27

It is, and we haven't had that conversation. Maybe we should.

Presenter21:30

Mm-hmm.

Presenter21:31

And in terms of the new world that was opening up to you, I mean, you did well academically. You also learned some very important life skills. It wasn't just skiing. What were the kind of things were you learning?

Gary O'Donoghue21:42

Oh, I mean, I do remember that they they took a group of us over to a disused airfield a a little few miles away and taught us how to drive. Wow. Like and it's it was crazy. And he they said, of course you'll never drive, but you should know what it's like.

Speaker 421:56

Yeah.

Gary O'Donoghue21:56

And so whatever 14, there's five of us in this dual-controlled car with one teacher and there's four blind kids in the back saying, oh faster, faster, faster. And we're driving around this old airfield and it was so exciting.

Presenter22:10

It was so

Presenter22:12

All right, Gary, it's time to go to the music. Disc number four, if you would.

Gary O'Donoghue22:17

So, um, my dad took me down to um Denmark Street here in London, Tinpan Alley, they used to call it. And um, I bought a or he bought me a Fender Strat copy in Sunburst. And me and three other guys when we were about fifteen started this band and um

Presenter22:23

Mm.

Gary O'Donoghue22:35

We used to go and play the pubs around Worcester and the West Midlands and Birmingham, and we'd get paid in beer.

Speaker 222:38

Yeah.

Gary O'Donoghue22:41

By these public. We were underage. All of us were underage. I mean, you wouldn't get away with it now, but they would pay us in beer. It was enormous fun. I can't tell you how much fun.

Presenter22:49

Fantastic. What were you called? What was the biomark?

Gary O'Donoghue22:53

We were called for some random reason shogun. We had nothing to do with Japan. I think it was on the telly at the time, but.

Speaker 223:00

I love the ambition of the name though. That's impressive.

Gary O'Donoghue23:02

So compressive. We would sit up all night trying to make up names for the band and just collapse into hysterics for hours on end, finally rejecting Iron Fist for Shogun.

Speaker 223:08

But

Speaker 223:13

Well, they're both good. They're both very, very strong.

Gary O'Donoghue23:16

So in the band we used to do a lot of cover versions and from that sort of era I got introduced to ZZ Top. So this song is from a live album they did and it's just a fantastic kind of lazy but energetic blues song and I just love the title and it's Jesus Just Left Chicago.

Speaker 423:41

Lives of Chicago

Speaker 423:46

And it's found to move on with

Speaker 423:55

Well my beautiful Reptic Can go.

Speaker 424:01

It is bound for the rally.

Presenter24:08

ZZ Top and Jesus Just Left Chicago.

Presenter24:12

So Gary O'Donoghue, you read Philosophy and Modern Languages at Oxford University. Your parents, as you mentioned, left school at fourteen. What did it mean to you and your parents that you got a place there?

Gary O'Donoghue24:24

My parents were beside themselves. I mean they they weren't very expressive, but they were chuffed beyond belief. And they had no idea, you know, what was involved, I don't think. And the first day we we went up, my dad said to me, Do you mind if we is it all right if we turn up in a van? I said, Oh, dad, it's fine. Van is fine. And and those braille books won't fit in anything.

Speaker 424:47

I didn't know.

Presenter24:47

Uh

Speaker 424:49

Anyway

Presenter24:49

Yeah, exactly.

Gary O'Donoghue24:50

So he was sort of unsure but also completely delighted.

Presenter24:54

So they didn't know what was in store for you? I mean, what about you? How did you find life at Oxford after being at a school that was that was specifically for entirely for blind students?

Gary O'Donoghue25:04

It was a bit of a shock. I mean, I was made to feel very welcome, absolutely. And there was a sort of quiet support that I got from my college, which was Christchurch. You know, I remember in the very early days saying to someone, just randomly, the Braille books are a different size to ordinary books, so they don't fit on the shelf in my room. And like two days later, there's a sort of knock on the door, and the college carpenter is there saying, We've come to build some shelves for you to fit the books. So they would do like quiet, simple things like that, and made it very clear that if I needed anything, I was to talk to them. But it was a shock in the sense that, you know, I kind of thought of myself as completely well, obviously, I knew I couldn't see, but I thought of myself as normal. I thought, well, the world's just going to be fine. Why would the world be strange? And these are all clever people. Why would they be strange? And some of them were lovely, and some of them were strange and didn't really know how to relate or talk to you. And I do remember, you know, overhearing a conversation at dinner one night a few seats down with someone saying, oh, yeah, I went to knock on his door, but the lights were out, so I wasn't sure whether he was in or not. And I remember thinking, God, you do need to turn the lights on, Gazza, but otherwise people are not going to know you're in your room.

Speaker 225:32

So

Speaker 225:35

I hope that

Gary O'Donoghue26:17

So it was, you know, as I say, there were lots of people who were lovely, but it took some, and some never, you know, some people never get used to it. I mean, I remember in the first term going to the university's counselling service and talking to someone there, and they sort of, I explained what I was sort of feeling, not really understanding it. And this woman gave me this book. I never forget it. It was a book called Stigma by a psychologist called Irving Goffman. It was an anatomy of difference and how difference is dealt with by the world and how people react and all different, not just blindness, but all different contexts of difference. I remember thinking at the time, someone's thought about this before. Isn't that amazing? You know, you're not experiencing anything unique here. This has been anatomised and categorised and analysed. And that was a lifting of a burden for me. And I realised that, you know, at that point, you know, there was a roadmap, you know, there were ways of dealing with this sort of stuff. And that you didn't have to make it up yourself.

Speaker 226:53

Yeah.

Speaker 426:53

Yeah.

Speaker 226:53

Yeah.

Speaker 426:59

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 226:59

Uh

Speaker 427:00

No.

Speaker 227:00

Yeah.

Presenter27:15

They were waiting.

Presenter27:20

And in terms of your own map and way forward, at what point did it occur to you that you'd like to be a journalist?

Gary O'Donoghue27:27

It's pretty much by chance, I think. Uh my dad again.

Gary O'Donoghue27:32

Picked someone up in his cab, which I know always sounds like the start to a bad story. But he picked up a he was actually a blind chap called Kevin Mulhern who ran a production company making a programme from for central television at the time called Link. And it was a disability magazine programme. He happened to pick him up and my dad had got talking to him. Kevin said to my dad, Oh, why doesn't he come along and have a look at one of our shows go out? And this was when I was like in the second year or something like that at university. And so I went up to Birmingham and I looked at it and I kind of got a bit starstruck by this whole business. And I liked the fact they were, you know, just having people on telling stories and talking about issues and things like that. That was interesting. And he put me in touch with a couple of other people. And that meant that by the time I went on my year abroad to France, I sort of had some contacts and I started going down. I was meant to be going to some lectures at the Sorbonne, but I would go down to the BBC office in the Rue de Faubourg Saint-Henore and borrow their reel-to-reel viewer tape recorder and do little interviews and sneak back to London. And this legendary producer from In Touch, Thena Heschel, who I've got so much to thank for, she took me under her wing and gave me an awful lot, as did Peter White, who was the presenter, has been the presenter of that programme for forever.

Speaker 228:14

You know, that would be a good idea.

Speaker 228:30

Do I try?

Speaker 228:37

Yeah.

Presenter29:01

So you were s you were doing philosophy and modern languages at Oxford, and it was French in particular for you, wasn't it?

Gary O'Donoghue29:08

Yes, I always loved the language and one of my friends at school in fact said you should listen to some debussy. And he played me this piece and I've never forgotten it and I always have it around and I listen to it regularly because it's a kind of reverie and it's a kind of it sort of transports you somewhere and it's a piece called La Field Chevreu de la which basically translates as the girl with the flaxen hair.

Presenter30:34

Part of De Bussy's La Fie aux Chevaux de l'Am, performed by Arturo Benedetti Michelangelie.

Presenter30:41

Gary O'Donoghue, so you'd started filing radio pieces for the BBC, but you were turned down for several traineeships. Why do you think you were turned down?

Gary O'Donoghue30:50

Well, I was told at one point by someone that that they didn't think a a blind person could be a reporter, and certainly not a television reporter.

Presenter30:57

And w and what was the situation? Was there anti-discrimination legislation in place at the time?

Gary O'Donoghue31:01

No, no, no, that's before any of that. I mean, fortunately, a couple of people at Westminster, the BBC's Westminster office, Bob Eggington and Richard Eyre, took a punt on me, to be honest, you know, gave me a chance. Then I worked on the local radio desk at Westminster through the 1992 general election. And then I got a job after that. And so ironically, all the people that I would have been, you know, were on these training courses were still on their training courses. And suddenly I had a job.

Speaker 231:13

Yeah.

Speaker 431:29

Uh

Presenter31:29

Newer in World War II.

Presenter31:32

And that was the beginning for you. That was it th the door kind of swung open.

Gary O'Donoghue31:36

Yeah.

Speaker 431:36

Uh

Presenter31:36

But this was still a pre-digital world, so how did you get the information that you needed and how did you get through it all to keep on top of the news agenda?

Gary O'Donoghue31:45

It was this sort of constant process of begging and borrowing time from colleagues, friends, family.

Gary O'Donoghue31:52

You know, I remember living with a girl and, you know, at night time, you know, going to bed and say, Would you mind reading these cutting these newspaper cuttings? Like, not the most

Presenter32:01

That one did didn't work out, did it not?

Gary O'Donoghue32:03

Quite rightly, she thought that was a bit much.

Presenter32:08

How does that compare to now? Because obviously there's more information, but presumably more accessible information because you have this text-to-speech technology.

Gary O'Donoghue32:16

Yeah, the landscape has been transformed, but you're always going to be one step behind because the technology moves on and your special technology doesn't keep up as quickly.

Presenter32:28

Right.

Gary O'Donoghue32:28

Because the market is small and innovation takes time and all that kind of thing. But you rely on the flow of information. That's the crucial thing. How do you absorb what's being said, written, broadcast in a landscape that's kind of exploded in terms of outlets and media formats and online and social media? And as a sort of blind person, you can only really absorb things in a linear fashion. You can't, you know, skim an article or skim through a timeline. And I spend a lot of time in the evenings, in the early mornings.

Presenter32:28

Uh

Speaker 232:57

Boom.

Gary O'Donoghue33:05

Trying to sort of keep up, I suppose, and that takes a certain amount out of you.

Presenter33:10

Gary, in 2008 you came quite close to taking the BBC to an employment tribunal for disability discrimination. So this relates to the 2007 foot-and-mouth outbreak in Surrey. You'd found out that the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown was returning early from his holiday to deal with the crisis. You were the duty reporter at Westminster and expected to present your scoop on the flagship 10 o'clock TV News, but you were dropped in favour of a cited reporter. What do you remember about the incident?

Gary O'Donoghue33:41

Um

Gary O'Donoghue33:43

I'm pretty limited in what I can say about that, to be honest. But what I will say is that it was a really difficult time, actually, and it was a very hard decision. And it didn't come out of the blue. I'd spent a couple of years knocking on doors quietly, trying to tell people that I felt there was a systemic problem and that I wasn't being treated the same as other colleagues. and it was heard but not understood. And a moment came where I felt I had to make a stand and it was hard because I loved what I did and I felt a genuine loyalty to the BBC I'd worked for by that 15 years by that 15, 16 years by that time. But I thought it was important and I felt it was important not just for me but I thought it was important for those who come after too.

Speaker 234:25

Good.

Speaker 234:28

Uh

Presenter34:28

Mm.

Presenter34:36

I mean, I should say the BBC had an internal inquiry at the time and didn't find evidence of discrimination, but in the end they settled with you.

Presenter34:44

We're, you know, twenty years on from that almost.

Presenter34:47

How much have things changed? How much more inclusive is the workplace that we find ourselves in today?

Gary O'Donoghue34:53

It is much more inclusive. The one thing that really encourages me is that in the work I do day to day now, I'm dealing with people who have responsibility who are sort of a generation or two younger than me, you know, in their 30s, people controlling day to day the main news bulletins and things like that. And they just don't have those deep inbuilt sort of issues about disability that people of my generation sometimes do. You know, my daughter's generation, their attitude to difference, they're not thrown by it.

Presenter35:28

All right, Gary, I think we should have some more music now. It's your sixth choice today. What's it gonna be?

Gary O'Donoghue35:33

Okay, so I said I hated disco, didn't I? But so I'm making an exception for this song and I've chosen this for two reasons. One, because it takes me back to those early working days in the 90s where we would work late till six at Westminster and then we'd go out to Soho till one in the morning and then get up back in for eight again. But there was a club we used to go to particularly, I think on a Friday night, I don't know if the night or the club was called Car Wash and we used to go there ironically, obviously, to dance to disco, yeah. But later when my daughter Lucy was born, when she was very little, we used to, this was one of the songs I would put on in the car and turn out really, really loud and sing to the maximum extent of our voices and annoy Lucy's mother incredibly. And I just, it has a lot of joy about it. So it's Car Wash by Rose Royce.

Presenter35:36

So

Speaker 236:26

Um

Speaker 436:34

You might not ever get rich

Speaker 436:38

A limitation is better than digging a niche.

Speaker 436:43

There ain't no telling who you might be.

Speaker 436:46

A movie star, or maybe even a

Speaker 436:49

Did you look at the car wash?

Speaker 436:54

In the car was here

Speaker 436:57

I'm only singing with power

Presenter37:01

Rose Royce and Car Wash. So Gary O'Donaghue, let me take you back to Butler, Pennsylvania in twenty twenty four and that assassination attempt on Donald Trump. You sourced some incredible eyewitness testimony that day. And there was one interviewee who you know, your interaction with him went around the world.

Gary O'Donoghue37:21

There was a team of us. It wasn't just me and all that. You know, my producer, I owner, my cameraman, Sam. You know, it was a joint effort. But I didn't know this, but he was holding a can of beer. He had this weird orange kind of a headpiece on, I suppose. He'd had that clearly wasn't his first can of beer.

Presenter37:38

It was kind of a combination of a Donald Trump hairstyle and a sort of bit of a red Make America Great Again hat. Right.

Gary O'Donoghue37:43

Make a

Gary O'Donoghue37:44

It was striking, I think.

Presenter37:46

Striking is is a good word.

Gary O'Donoghue37:48

So Iona found this guy who said he'd seen the shooter and and tried to warn the Secret Service. It was a risk putting him on live, but I talked to him and

Gary O'Donoghue37:59

All I did really was keep asking him the same question in a different way, and he just kept being consistent. And I thought, okay, this is someone who is not making stuff up.

Presenter38:11

Well, I want to talk about another uh moment which was in a way unexpected, which was an exclusive twenty minute phone call with Donald Trump, President Trump, which happened last year. So you had put a lot of preparation into this interview happening, but it didn't happen when you were expecting it to.

Gary O'Donoghue38:30

I got the word back that this could happen, this might happen. We got sort of ready, we were going to film my end of the phone call. And the ringtone on my phone is the theme from succession. And when we were rehearsing this thing, we sort of reprogrammed the phone number on my phone, so it just came up with the president sort of thing. And when my phone rang, my producer said, you cannot, people will think that's deliberate. That will become a meme. You need to change that to something more vanilla. So I have changed it back since, to be fair. And the next day.

Speaker 238:58

You need to change the

Gary O'Donoghue39:05

I thought the moment had passed, they weren't really responding. And so that following evening I was I went back to my apartment, sort of nap on the sofa. And then sort of mid-evening the phone rang and the press secretary said, Hello, Gary, it's Caroline. And the President's with me and I'm handing him over now. And I was going...

Presenter39:29

So you've just woken up at this point.

Gary O'Donoghue39:30

And I I sort of touched the phone screen and accidentally hang up. And then they they rang fortunately they rang back and uh I was scrabbling for my little recorder thing and we started to do the interview and I wasn't entirely sure I'd started recording.

Gary O'Donoghue39:46

Oh no. No, but the pressure was on and so we talked and I thought I might get five minutes and I got twenty minutes.

Speaker 239:54

What was your approach?

Gary O'Donoghue39:55

There are plenty of interviews where, you know, a sort of competitive and stuff like that. But I w what I wanted to do was try and draw him out a bit. And so I would ask as open a question as I could, and when there was a bit of a silence, I wouldn't fill it, and he would fill it.

Presenter40:10

What do you remember taking away from it?

Gary O'Donoghue40:14

Well, it was the end of a long, must have been the end of a long day, certainly for me and probably for him. You know, he was in a slightly more reflective mood, and he was on his own in the oval with the press secretary. That was, you know, they were the only people there. And, you know, I remember at the moment, you know, at one moment when I think I asked him whether he trusted Putin or not, and there was this sort of pause, this long pause, and he said, I trust almost nobody. And I remember a sort of chill running up my spine and thinking, that must be really lonely, a really lonely place.

Presenter40:48

So you've just hung up. What happened next?

Gary O'Donoghue40:51

I ring I owner and say, uh can you come?

Gary O'Donoghue40:56

To my apartment and see whether this has worked or not.

Presenter41:01

So an adrenal weight to see if it's actually recorded.

Gary O'Donoghue41:02

To see if it's actually recorded. And she takes the recorder and plugs it into her computer and says, Yes, I can see 20 minutes of recording there.

Presenter41:11

What would you have done if it hadn't worked?

Gary O'Donoghue41:13

When I thought about that, I thought maybe I should just tell no one that it had happened, pretend it hadn't.

Presenter41:17

And it has

Gary O'Donoghue41:19

But if you're the foreign press in the United States, you're kind of quite low down the pecking order. And the BBC hadn't had an interview with a US President for nearly a decade, a sitting US President. I mean, he does a lot of interviews and he's done several since with British outlets. But we were, you know, we were the first, so that's what gives me a lot of pleasure.

Presenter41:41

Let's go to the music, Gary. It's your seventh choice today. What are we going to hear?

Gary O'Donoghue41:46

So there was this Donkey Adventure idea I'd had in my head for years about the blind blues men in the south in the earlier 20th century. And this title popped into my head, Blind, Black and Blue. And then eventually a very good producer I've worked with before called Lee Kumatat, she got us an interview with someone from Radio 3 who said, Yeah, go and do it. And we had this road trip through the South. And I've chosen a song.

Gary O'Donoghue42:16

From that, I mean they they played all sorts of different kinds of blues, you know some of it was very raunchy kind of you know quite lewd and then you know on a Sunday they'd go and play sort of spirituals in the church, you know, but I've picked one that is very much on the sort of spiritual end and this is dark was the night and cold was the ground and it's blind Willie Johnson

Speaker 242:22

But

Presenter43:05

Dark was the night and cold was the ground, blind Willie Johnson.

Presenter43:10

Gary O'Donoghue, you've lived in the States for over ten years now, but your partner Sarah, a former journalist, and your daughter Lucy, live here in the UK. You've got a place in Yorkshire. How do you maintain family life with that distance?

Gary O'Donoghue43:24

We see quite a lot of one another, we're lucky enough to do that. But there are times when it's a strain. And you know, I'm certainly not in a hardship posting or anything like that. But being away is difficult. And there are times where you wish you weren't just there in your own much as I like my own company. There are times you wish you weren't just there in your own head. Or cooking for one is boring.

Presenter43:49

Is there anything you've missed out on, do you think, of your you know, over the years?

Gary O'Donoghue43:54

Um I've obviously been not been around as much as I would have loved to have been for Lucy growing up, not least because even when I was in the UK I was working in London all week and things like that. Um so I think that there's been a there's been a bit of a price for that, for her particularly. Um but we're very close.

Presenter44:12

Gary, obviously we've been looking back on your story and reflecting on what you've done. I wonder what you're proudest of.

Gary O'Donoghue44:19

What am I proud of? I'm proud of kind of staying the course actually because if you're a blind, I mean 70% of blind people of working age are out of work, don't have a job. And so like every day of my life, I still believe, despite one's experience and whatever, that if I lost my job tomorrow, I probably wouldn't be able to get another one. I do genuinely believe that. And so staying the course and being one of the lucky ones is something I'm proud of, of not having given up. You know, when I became a political correspondent, you know, my dad, as I say, who didn't have a formal education, but, you know, was fascinated by politics, constantly writing letters to government departments. He was just so pleased about that. And he wasn't around when I became the Washington correspondent. And I know he'd have loved it.

Speaker 244:29

Uh

Speaker 444:29

Don't have Yeah.

Presenter45:08

And I know that your mum did get to see, you know, a lot of your success. What what did she make of it?

Gary O'Donoghue45:14

She yeah, again, she was just quietly proud of it. She came out to Washington. But it was like in just after the the Trump she she died the next month after the Trump the Trump assassination attempt and and I was kind of in the midst of the election campaign and I I think I maybe got three days back at home. before I really had to sort of, you know, carry on and I didn't really get a

Speaker 445:37

Uh

Gary O'Donoghue45:42

a proper chance to sort of absorb it. You know, I felt a little bit like I'd done her a disservice by not really, um, grieving properly probably.

Presenter45:52

But you must have made her so proud, you know, that that moment she was so frightened for your future. And look at you now.

Gary O'Donoghue45:58

Well, I think I think she would have thought we'd done all right.

Presenter46:03

Well, Gary, there's a new adventure awaiting you because I'm about to cast you away to our desert island. How are you feeling about life there?

Gary O'Donoghue46:11

Uh yeah. I don't mind my own company.

Gary O'Donoghue46:15

At least for a bit. I don't know if I could build a shelter. I did do some woodwork at school. In fact, the only time I met the current king was when he came to our school, just before he got married, and we were doing a woodwork class and we were making stools. And the only thing he said to me was, Is it oak? And I said, We can't afford oak, it's ash, obviously. So I might be able to build a bit of a shelter.

Presenter46:33

Um

Presenter46:38

All right, well, I think we should have one more tune before you go.

Gary O'Donoghue46:41

So Lucy has my daughter has forced me to listen to new music. We have a shared Spotify playlist which she has entitled Club Bangers, which I quite like. And she keeps putting stuff on there. I don't really share her love of K-pop, to be fair, but she's

Speaker 246:52

Would check.

Speaker 246:58

You were just telling me you didn't like disco a minute ago.

Gary O'Donoghue47:01

Well indeed. But she keeps putting stuff on there and the one I've chosen is Charlie XEX and her song Von Dutch. My club-going days are long behind me, but I could maybe do a bit of dad dancing to this one because it is an absolute storming record. When that sort of bass line comes in, you can feel it go right through your skeleton.

Speaker 447:25

Just submit the harmful fantasy You're obsessed and just confess it cause

Speaker 447:32

I'm your number one. I'm your number one.

Presenter47:54

Charlie XEX and Von Dutch. Love them. So good. So, Gary O'Donoghue, I'm going to send you away to the island now. I'm giving you the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, and you can take one other book. What's it going to be?

Gary O'Donoghue48:07

Well just state, you do know that the Bible in bread is forty-eight volumes.

Presenter48:10

I heard it's a substantial tome. Yeah, it's going to keep you busy.

Gary O'Donoghue48:12

It's going to keep you busy. It's like two meters high. So we'll have to find somewhere to put that. So thank you. The book I've chosen is The History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell. I'm so glad I did philosophy at university. I was never very good at it, but it taught me a way of thinking that was a sort of lifelong gift.

Presenter48:32

You can also have a luxury item. What will that be?

Gary O'Donoghue48:35

I think what I've decided to have is a cricket ball, a red cricket ball that they use in the test matches, because I've listened to the cricket on the radio since I was a small child and loved it. And I have a cricket ball in my apartment on the little table next to where I spend my life sitting around. And when I have a thing, I just have to throw it from hand to hand. And if you've ever, I don't know if you've ever smelled a cricket ball, but the leather smell is lovely. And then the texture of the seam. The only thing is that kind of if it rolls away on the beach, can it be like a magic one that comes back? Because that would be tragic if I lost it.

Presenter49:13

Yeah, we definitely either that or we just get you like a massive pile so you can never run out and you know where they are.

Gary O'Donoghue49:19

That would be great.

Presenter49:19

Okay, we'll definitely make sure that you don't lose it. What a soulful luxury, I love that. And finally, which one track of the eight that you've shared with us today, Gary, would you save from the waves?

Gary O'Donoghue49:29

Blind Willie Johnson. The fact that he doesn't there are no words means you can add your own words and your own meaning to it and it sort of reaches into your soul in a way that I think might be constantly fruitful.

Presenter49:44

Gary O'Donoghue, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Gary O'Donoghue49:48

It's been such fun. Thank you.

Presenter50:08

Hello, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Gary. I'll definitely make sure we've got plenty of cricket balls to practice his spin bowling on the island for him. We've cast away many journalists, including Clive Myri, Lindsay Hilson, and Lise Doucette. Gary's friend, in touch, presenter Peter White is in our archive too. The studio manager for today's programme was Steve Greenwood. The executive production coordinator was Susie Roylance. The content editor was Mugabe Turia, and the producer was Paula McGinley. Next time, my guest will be the actor Emily Watson. I hope you'll join us.

Speaker 450:52

If you've got a scrolling problem, then this is the podcast for you. It's called Top Comment with me, Matt Shea, and me, Mariana Spring. We both investigate social media for a living. Whether it's disinformation, conspiracy theories, internet culture, memes, we're going to be getting behind the stuff that is popping up on your feed on this podcast. That's Top Comment on BBC Sounds.