Arlene and I swap dress shop tips
Tracey Magee lifts the lid on her new role as UTV Political Editor
POLITICIANS aren’t the only people being kept on their toes by Tracey Magee.
Couriers and delivery men have become fitter and leaner thanks to the constant trudging up and down to the self-confessed shopaholic’s door.
But at least the packages are never that heavy.
“You can’t wear the same clothes all the time on television,” said UTV’S newly appointed Political Editor, adding: “That’s my excuse anyway, it’s what I always tell my husband.”
Yes, Tracey does “an awful lot of shopping for clothes” but that is no guarantee of staving off a potentially awkward wardrobe moment, especially at press conferences with Northern Ireland’s First Minister.
“Arlene Foster buys quite a lot out of the same shops as me,” she said.
“In the past we’ve told each other to avoid a certain dress, for example, because one of us was going to buy it...”
There aren’t many people who would dare tell the formidable DUP leader what to do, but when you have earned the sort of respect Tracey commands, you can get away with it.
It has been a significant week for Tracey, who turned 52 last Saturday and succeeds veteran Ken Reid today.
The promotion comes some 24 years after she first walked through the doors of Havelock House in April 1997.
It has been a long and winding road to get to where she is now, and although she’s delighted with her new role, there are mixed feelings about how it came about.
Four years ago the hugely popular Ken was diagnosed with an incurable form of blood cancer.
Already a type 2 diabetic, it was clear that the Co Antrim man could not continue in the demanding role indefinitely.
Having been working from his Ballymena home during lockdown, the father-of-three announced his retirement just before Christmas last year.
And no one will miss him more than his west Belfast-born successor.
“Ken is the best,” she said. “He is great, a gentleman.
“When he first came back from being ill, there were things that he couldn’t do — for example, fly, and I was his helper more than anything else.
“He was brilliant with me. I was able to learn from him”.
She added: “He’s been very generous with me, a real mentor. He’s been doing the job for decades. I’m genuinely going to miss him; he is, and always will be, my big mate.”
She may be one of Northern Ireland’s leading broadcast journalists now, but the English literature graduate from Queen’s University Belfast actually began her working life as an office clerk with the Inland Revenue.
“I thought being unpopular was being a tax woman until I became a journalist,” she said, laughing.
“I started out at the Inland Revenue, but soon realised it wasn’t for me.
“I just couldn’t take the daily predictability of it so I went the opposite way and took a job where you can’t predict anything.
“I was 24 or 25 when I decidwas ed to start again. I went to Belfast College, did an NVQ in journalism and landed my first job in the Mid-ulster Mail in Cookstown.”
Her first foray into investigative journalism involved finding the location of her new employer.
“I didn’t even know where Cookstown was,” the Rathmore Grammar School past pupil recalled.
“I had to buy a map to find out the venue for the interview.
“All I knew about Cookstown that it was far away and you got sausages out of it...”
That aside, it was clear to Tracey that she was on the right track career-wise.
“I was good at English and that’s actually how I ended up in the Inland Revenue,” she said.
“Although I had a degree, it trained me for nothing, so I took the first job that came along.
“I took the wrong path at the start and then I had to back out of that cul-de-sac and start again.
“I suppose because I had taken a wrong step before I just didn’t want to make that mistake again and once I committed to journalism, I was so determined.
“I was so driven. I wanted to give it my best shot.”
Tracey, who has an older sister Lisa (54), a production coordinator at the BBC, said she got a lot of support from her mum Yvonne (77), a retired school secretary, who separated from her dad when Tracey was just three years old.
“She instilled in me a belief that you could do anything you wanted once you make up your mind to do it and I just stuck with it,” she said.
“It was all about doing the next right thing. Keep pushing and pushing and I got there.”
She enjoyed working for the Mail and also freelanced for the Sunday Life newspaper, but broadcast journalism came calling courtesy of Belfast City Radio (later Citybeat) and, ultimately, shifts on UTV.
Tracey said she never imagined rising to where she is now, and admitted that “timing and luck” played a key role.
“I arrived into UTV for a week’s work experience,” she recalled.
“My then boss told me he didn’t know if I could do the job,
‘She instilled in me a belief that you could do anything you wanted once you make up your mind to do it’
so he said he would give me a week and ‘if you’re any good I’ll keep you on in a freelance capacity’.
“Can you imagine that week? I was green behind the ears.
“There was violence, the political talks were ongoing heading up to the Good Friday Agreement so it was a very busy newsroom.
“I was very lucky to get in the door. I went from there. I showed an aptitude.
“All the way through my career I learned on the job, that’s the nature of it”.
You get the impression now that Tracey is omnipresent on our screens but she actually stepped away from the camera for a time nine years ago.
“I’d decided I was going to be a planning editor,” she said.
“The first job I had to plan was the Olympic torch coming here.
“Then Ken took ill. He was diagnosed with diabetes in November 2012. I remember it because it was the day that David Black (the prison officer) was shot dead by dissident republicans.
“They’d asked me to step up and I was hoping to break myself in gently but that didn’t happen because there was that shooting, and then the flags protests. It was a real baptism of fire.”
Tracey, a self-proclaimed “political nerd”, has found that Brexit is the story that keeps on giving.
“I started going over to Westminster regularly, and it was high-stakes stuff because of the DUP relationship with the Conservatives at the time,” she said.
The Covid-19 pandemic, however, is “the most important story” she has ever reported on.
“Everybody is so desperate to know what’s going on,” she said.
“I’m desperate myself. I’m a mother, I have a child at school.”
For almost two decades Tracey has lived in east Belfast, where she shares a home with her video editor husband Ian (54) and 12-year-old son Jack, who is in his first year at Lagan College.
Tracey had Jack when she was 40, which she said was “better for me personally” than, say, deputy First Minister Michelle O’neill, who recently spoke about the challenges of giving birth at 16.
“At that age, I couldn’t have looked after a dog, never mind a baby,” said Tracey.
“When I had Jack, I had done everything that I wanted to do.
“I had established myself in my career.
“My husband was very supportive. When I had to be away from home working, like Washington for instance, he looked after Jack.
“I feel far better doing the job now that Jack’s 12 when all he’s interested in is his Xbox.”
A typical day starts around 8am and officially ends at 6.30pm but you’re always “at the beck and call” of the news agenda.
Fortunately, Tracey’s other half, whom she met when he worked at UTV, is a dab hand around the house.
“I can’t cook to save my life,” Tracey said.
“Ian’s a brilliant cook so he does all the cooking in the house.
“He tells me that I could burn water and I think he’s actually right... You can’t be good at everything, that’s my attitude.”
So what do you do around the house?
She replied: “Cleaning and ironing and sometimes I stack the dishwasher.”
None of this explains how Tracey maintains her impeccable appearance on screen during the seemingly interminable lockdown that she reports on virtually every night.
She revealed that she has even been accused of getting “sneaky hairdresser” appointments, but is happy for the opportunity to set the record straight.
“Garnier Nutrisse [hair dye] has saved my life,” she revealed.
“And not only does my husband cook, he does my hair for me too.
“He claims to be my chief colourist now, so I get him to do my roots when they need done...”
When pushed for pastimes, she concedes to having acquired two last summer.
“I started a whole exercise regime,” she admitted.
“It really requires a huge effort because I’m not one of those people who jumps out of bed and says ‘right, let’s go to the gym’!
“But I got into the swing of it and I’m now feeling great for it. Then I started doing a bit round the garden.”
She added: “I proudly told Ian that I now have two hobbies — keep fit and gardening...”
You forgot about online shopping, Tracey.
The delivery men haven’t.