Why is he doing it?
He’s one of the BBC’s most distinguished newsreaders. So what’s possessed Michael Buerk to risk his reputation on TV’s tackiest reality show? We asked his long-suffering (and VERY forthright) wife
BEFORE his departure to the Australian jungle to take part in the latest series of I’m A Celebrity, Michael Buerk had to see a psychiatrist to make sure he was mentally robust enough to cope with the challenge. ‘I don’t think he took it entirely seriously,’ says his wife, Christine. ‘He said it was their way of making sure you were mad enough to go.’
Michael has apparently ticked that box: this week, the veteran 69-year-old broadcaster and host of Radio 4’s The Moral Maze joined the traditional motley crew of soap-stars, has-beens and ever-hopefuls for the 14th series in the I’m A Celebrity camp.
Tomorrow we will see him take his place around the camp-fire alongside his fellow jungle- dwellers, among them glamour model Kendra Wilkinson (a former girlfriend of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner), rapper Tinchy Stryder and Gemma Collins, whose elevation into the spotlight comes courtesy of her participation in The Only Way Is Essex, aka TOWIE.
Not Michael’s natural bedfellows. Indeed, he’d never heard of any of them prior to his departure. ‘He didn’t know who any of them were and nor did I,’ says Christine, herself much more of a Question Time and Classic FM kinda gal. ‘But I told him not to worry because they won’t have heard of him, either.’
Which, of course, makes Michael’s decision to participate in perhaps the most lowbrow of all the reality shows all the more baffling.
This, after all, is the man whose expose of the Ethiopian famine was the inspiration for Live Aid, who prides himself on bringing robust intellectual debate to our airwaves on his weekly radio show, and who has made his views on some of the less high-minded offerings on TV all too clear (only this year he denounced much of the output of BBC3 as ‘at the embarrassing end of drivel’). He is also, as he put it himself this week, a ‘frightful snob’.
Now he will find himself holed up with a cast of C-listers, eating witchetty grubs and other stomach-churning ‘ bush-tucker’. Which begs the question: what on earth possessed him?
Christine, a no-nonsense, cheerful sort who has shared his life for the best part of half a century, is as baffled — and intrigued — as everyone else.
‘I imagine he’ll find aspects of it deeply tiresome,’ she says with a wry smile and characteristic British understatement.
What his jungle mates make of him will, no doubt, make for some very entertaining viewing. Michael is, says Christine, a hopeless cook and entirely impractical.
He’s also ‘utterly clueless’ as to what awaits him, never having watched much — if any — reality television at all (he agreed to go on Celebrity MasterChef six years ago only because he thought he might learn to cook; he was booted off after one episode).
‘It’s true he doesn’t have much time for reality shows,’ says Christine. ‘He’ll probably have even less time for them by the time he comes out — but really that’s part of the fun.
‘He’s faced lots of real challenges in life. He’s been shot at, gassed, blown up, jailed . . . so he’s dealt with a lot of rather serious things. Although I suppose that’s not the same as being locked in a coffin with a lot of rats.’
Christine clearly has a better idea than her husband of the kind of sadistic endurance trials the j ungle contestants have to endure.
Smartly dressed when we meet, and sipping on a chilled glass of wine, it is hard to imagine her feathers being easily ruffled.
The perfectly matched pair met on a j ournalism training course in Wolverhampton in early 1967 when they were cub reporters. Michael was, says Christine, ‘quite a cool dude’.
They married within 18 months in Christine’s native Hereford, when she was just 21. Their sons, identical twins Roland and Simon, came along five years later.
‘Michael had a fairly difficult childhood and he was eager to have a family of his own,’ his wife says.
Indeed, raised by a single mum who died when he was 15, Buerk met his father only once, when he was 22. Three months later, he, too, died.
Theirs was, Christine says, a fairly traditional marriage: ‘He pursued his career and I went with him and got a job wherever he was going to be.’ She continued with her own journalistic career until shortly before the birth of the twins, and then raised them virtually single-handed for long stretches. ‘ Michael was often away for long periods with his work, so there were plenty of times when really I was a single mum.’
Over the ensuing years, Michael’s work took him all over the world,
‘Eating a sheep’s eyeball? I’m sure he’ll be OK’
including a four-year stint as the BBC’s Africa correspondent. It was from there, in October 1984, that he made his landmark report on Ethiopia’s desperate famine which would capture the attention of Bob Geldof, and launch Live Aid.
‘He knew he’d got something pretty exceptional. I was hugely proud of him. And I am — not just for that, but f or all sorts of r easons,’ says Christine.
He certainly put himself in the line of fire: in 1991, while reporting on the death throes of Ethiopia’s civil war, he nearly died in a bomb blast in Addis Ababa which killed his video technician and in which his cameraman lost an arm.
As his sons grew up, Michael took on more static presenter duties, enabling him to spend more time at the family home in Guildford, Surrey. After presenting the BBC lunchtime news, he moved to the 9pm bulletin, which had morphed into the 10 o’clock news by the time he left in 2002.
Since 1990, he has also presented The Moral Maze, a lively debate examining the moral issues behind the week’s news stories.
Newscasters, of course, are meant to be neutral, but over the years Michael has been no stranger to making his own headlines.
In 2005, he became embroiled in a row after being quoted saying that men had been reduced to ‘sperm donors’ in a female- dominated society which increasingly sets the agenda in business, politics and the media.
Even his old friend Anna Ford joined in the chorus of dismay, calling him a ‘dear old-fashioned chauvinist of the first order’.
It is an accusation that deeply rattles Christine. ‘Ah yes, Michael Buerk the complete misogynist,’ she says with a sigh.
‘It’s completely untrue and I feel quite cross about it. All that somehow got taken out of context, that he thought women were taking over the world, which is not what he thought or thinks at all.
‘Actually what he was trying to say was that some young men, like those on sink estates, lacked role models. He was utterly lambasted for it, but what can you do? If you come out fighting you’re accused of protesting too much. You just have to shrug it off.’
Still, it is pronouncements like this, along with more recent offerings — he dubbed Strictly presenter Tess Daly a ‘pneumatic birdbrain’ and defended the BBC’s policy of removing older women from presenting duties on the basis that ‘if you got the job in the first place because you look nice, I
‘I do worry bugs will get caught in his beard’
can’t see why you should keep it when you don’t’ — that have helped cement his reputation as something of a grumpy old man.
Again, Christine leaps to his defence. ‘ He can certainly do the grumpy old man bit, there’s no two ways about it, but he’s got a great sense of humour and he’s not afraid to make fun of himself.’
Away from radio duties, the couple seem to have a rather idyllic life pottering around the countryside and spending long stints at a time on their beloved sailing boat, which is moored in Turkey.
Which again makes Michael’s decision to raise his head above the parapet all the more peculiar.
‘ Celebrity Masterchef was my fault,’ says Christine. ‘I thought it was like Strictly, in that you got taught to cook, so I thought it would be perfect.
‘Then he got an email asking him to send the recipe for his signature dish and we realised you were meant to be able to cook already. I’ve never seen him so nervous. We spent three days practising and then he only lasted an episode and got chucked out, thank goodness.’
Unsurprisingly, the producers of Strictly have also come knocking over the years, only to be repeatedly declined, much to hi s wife’s disappointment.
‘I’d love him to do Strictly, as he can’t dance at all, but he takes the view that John Sergeant has done the Eddie the Eagle hopeless bit already and it doesn’t need to be done again.’
By all accounts, the producers of I’m a Celebrity had also been equally persistent, approaching Michael for the last four years to ask him to go on the show. The requests were batted away, with typical sang froid. ‘ He never told me about those approaches,’ says Christine. ‘In fact, it wasn’t a big conversation this year either.’
Neither of them had ever watched the show, barring a couple of episodes in 2004 when former BBC Royal correspondent Jennie Bond was taking part.
‘I must say, I thought it looked pretty horrible. And apparently it’s got much worse,’ says Christine. ‘But really, I have very little idea what goes on there and nor does Michael. The producers sent him some footage which he didn’t watch, so he honestly doesn’t have much of a clue.’
I ask if he will be able to bear the horror of eating a kangaroo’s penis or chomp on a sheep’s eyeball, but she
barely bats an eyelid. ‘Well, I’m sure he’ll be OK. After all, they’re only another type of meat aren’t they?’ Hmmm. This should make for interesting viewing.
But Michael did at least ring Jennie for advice prior to his departure. ‘She said it was one of the best things she’d ever done. She thought it was hilarious that he was doing it. And she told him his worst problem would be boredom.’
I suggest that his problems may be worse than that: the jungle is not known for its searing intellectual debate (last year, one contestant, beauty queen Amy Willerton, expended considerable effort teaching TOWIE cast member Joey Essex how to tell the time).
‘I think he did worry that he might lose his gravitas. But then I think we both took the view that if a reputation you have built up over decades is so fragile that you can lose it overnight by doing something silly, then what does that say?’
There is, of course, one pull in the shape of a rumoured whacking great fee, said to be not unadjacent to £120,000. Christine won’t get drawn into money talk, other than to admit that the offer kept going ‘up and up’ and there comes a point when it seems difficult to refuse.
Some of the money, she says, will go towards paying for the future education of their grandchildren — Elsa, eight, Hani seven, Sonny, six, and five-year- old Laila. ‘We may have done that anyway, though,’ she says. ‘Being honest, I think he sees it as “mad money” really. I think he’s going to spend quite a lot of it on the boat.’
In an interview this week, Michael joked he might even spend some of the money on double glazing for t heir house and some ‘little indulgences’.
The couple didn’t consult their sons, who both live in Dubai, about their father’s intentions. Instead, Michael revealed what he was up to pretty much as he was boarding the plane to Australia after stopping over to stay with them en route.
‘He had told them he had some business in Australia, but neither of them had thought to inquire what it was, which he thought was quite funny,’ she says.
‘It’s only as he was leaving that one of them said: “So, what are you doing in Australia, Dad?” And he told them. But they seem to have taken it in their stride. They haven’t rung me to complain, in any case.’
Doubtless it would fall on deaf ears, for Michael’s take on the whole episode seems to be that you’re a long time dead. ‘I went through a phase of thinking “what the hell” . . . I’d rather be pilloried for what I did than be disappointed by what I didn’t do,’ he said this week.
This may be one reason for the newly acquired facial hair, too: Michael has gone into the jungle sporting a grey beard.
‘He actually grew it for charity, then thought he might as well keep it as I don’t think there is much in the way of grooming opportunities in the jungle,’ says Christine.
‘Actually, I think it suits him very well, but I don’t like kissing it. And I do worry that bugs might get caught up in it.’
We shall soon find out. As you read this, Michael is ensconced in the jungle ‘in lockdown’, meaning there is no further chance of contact.
Christine’s main worry, she confides, is that her ‘whippet-thin’ husband will lose weight.
‘He can’t afford to lose any more,’ she says. ‘And I do think he will get bored. He will definitely miss reading and writing as you’re not allowed to do either, and he’s quite active — he goes to the gym at least twice a week. In fact, he’s a bit obsessive about it in my opinion.
‘ Ultimately, he set off with a mindset to enjoy himself, and I do think you can decide whether you are going to make a drama of things or not.’
Christine can certainly not stand accused on that count. She flies out to Australia this week, and while she says she will be ‘glued’ to the show from the comfort of her hotel, she will not shed a tear if her husband is evicted first.
‘That’s the clever thing to do, isn’t it? Just get out, then sit in your nice hotel room. Either way, it’s just a bit of nonsense really, isn’t it?’
And on that I think everyone can be agreed.