With his easy-going on-screen manner, the newsreader Dermot Murnaghan does not look as if he is someone who finds his job stressful. Yet the co-presenter of BBC Breakfast, and last week the stand-in anchor of the News at Ten, acknowledges that when he comes off air he has heaps of adrenalin coursing round his body. The rest of his day is focused on trying to expel it from his system.
“It’s very bad for you building it all up,” he says. “Adrenalin was needed in the Stone Age as a resource for surviving real danger, not live television. It’s meant to be for human activity, so to stop it building up I try to be as active as possible after I’ve been on air.”
His solution is not to take a gentle jog through the park, though. Instead, he is more likely to be found sprinting across bridges over the Thames or powering up and down a swimming pool, particularly since accepting an offer this March from the charity Sparks, which aids medical research for children through sporting activities, to compete in the London Triathlon on August 6. It is the world’s largest triathlon, with more than 8,000 entrants, and a first for Murnaghan.
“It’s the classic Olympic triathlon,” he says. “A 1,500m (just under a mile) swim, followed by a 40km bike ride and then a 10km run.” At 48, with four children and a successful career in television news, for many people this would be a moment to slow down. Not Murnaghan, whose twinkly demeanour belies his steely ambition.
A presenter of BBC Breakfast’s news since 2002, his first job as an anchor was on Channel 4’s breakfast news show, which he presented from 1984 and throughout the Gulf War. But he came to prominence when he broke the news of the death nine years ago of Diana, Princess of Wales. In 1999 he won the Royal Television Society’s Interviewer of the Year award after his grilling of Peter Mandelson over the Geoffrey Robinson loan affair that led to Mandelson’s resignation from the Cabinet. A year on he was named Newscaster of the Year by the Television & Radio Industries Club.
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Given his professional achievements, presumably doing the triathlon will be a breeze. “It’s all about fitness. A triathlon is something I always fancied doing and it’s great having people shout at you; I mean gently encourage you.” By which he means his team of personal trainers at the health club of the One Aldwych hotel, Central London, where he has been working out for an hour twice a week for the past four months, following its 16-week get-fit “marathon package”. The club also allows him to use its 18m pool, which features underwater music.
Murnaghan is no stranger to pounding the pavements: he ran his first marathon in Dublin more than 20 years ago, completing the course in 3 hours 15 minutes; and he beat his own record a year later by completing the Belfast Marathon in under three hours. However, he says this is the first time he has been training properly. “Learning to swim has been astonishing. Swimming has always been a mystery to me. I’m delighted to have been taught how to do this simple, marvellous thing and how to do it properly. My crawl has been deconstructed.” Does the underwater music help? “You hardly notice it. You just plough up and down, doing the crawl. And because the swimming stage of the triathlon takes place in open water you don’t need to learn how to tumble-turn.”
Swimming is one of Murnaghan’s main concerns about competing in the London Triathlon, which kicks off with everyone leaping into the uninviting waters of the Royal Victoria Dock, East London. “I’m dreading the moment that we jump in. I don’t want to get kicked or be drowned, so I am planning to take my time and go wide. I can’t swim very fast, so what’s the point of trying to compete with everyone else? All I am thinking is docks, rats, urgh! “ And I will be wearing a wetsuit,” he mutters.
Dermot Murnaghan, the dapper chap from BBC Breakfast, the man with immaculate dress sense, in a wetsuit? Your fan base — he’s been described as the “thinking woman’s crumpet” — will love it. He roars with laughter. “I tried it on the other day and, my God, I could hardly look at myself.” Why? “Well it pulls in all the right bits, but it’s a bit tight. Skintight. It makes me speak like Mickey Mouse.”
Although he may not be very happy about leaping into the Royal Victoria Dock, this won’t be the first time that Murnaghan has made headlines by taking the plunge. In 1994 he dived into Lake Geneva fully dressed to save a small boy from drowning. He had gone to Switzerland for the ITV current affairs series The Big Story and was doing a piece to camera when he heard a scream from the child’s nanny. He looked down to see a little face underwater, bubbles rising to the surface. He leapt in without even taking his shoes off. “After I’d pulled the boy out, the cameraman turned and said to me that he was there to shoot pictures, not save lives. Can you believe such a thing?” he says.
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As a parent, Murnaghan must have fully understood the potential horror of losing a child. His daughter Kitty, 14, was aged 2 at the time, and he has three other children, ranging in age from 9 to 4, on whom he clearly dotes.
As a hands-on father who is often to be spotted at the school gates in North London, does he enforce swimming, cycling and running on them? “Well, Kitty is rather sporty; she’s in the school hockey and netball teams,” he says, “but I don’t think you can force it on people. The children walk to school and when we are at our holiday home in Ireland I make them walk to the pub, after which they get crisps. Maria, my wife, gets half a Guinness and I get a pint. It’s risk and reward,” he laughs. “Although when you get to a certain age it’s all about managing decline. So if you want to do lovely things like eating lunch and going out in the evening, you have to put the time in doing exercise.”
Murnaghan has certainly put the time in. As a child he played rugby in Northern Ireland and, since completing his first marathon, he has run another five. His last was the London Marathon in 2000, which he completed in four-and-a-half hours. “I did it with a friend from ITN who hadn’t done any training,” says Murnaghan. “He ran the first 13 miles in about 90 minutes, and then at 18 miles he blew up. We were running together and by the time we reached the Isle of Dogs I was being so foul to him that members of the public were actually shouting ‘Leave him alone!’ at me. But we got round and we finished together.” Whether this man is still a friend is a mystery, as Murnaghan refuses to reveal any details.
I get the feeling that Murnaghan has a slightly manic personality, needing goals and discipline to feel that he is living life to the full. “I enjoy having a structure, and having a focus,” he admits.
“My work is incredibly structured. Mentally, it is the most challenging TV job I have ever done. But I am not like a certain former political spin-doctor who is indeed rather manic about running races,” he continues, grinning. “In fact, I hate racing. I can’t stand it. I only did the marathons as an experiment in my own head, which I found I quite liked. I don’t like the marathon itself. There’s too much adrenalin going round.” Ah, that crucial hormone again.
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If you would like to sponsor Dermot Murnaghan in the triathlon, or to make a donation to Sparks (Sports Aiding Medical Research for Kids), visit www.sparks.org.uk.
London Triathlon, www.thelondontriathlon.com .