This much I know: Derek Davis
"Every fat man is used to rejection.
I was always an extrovert but it is only in retrospect that I see that you construct a persona to fit your person. Being a fat person, I constructed a persona to go along with my size.
It started in the school yard and then I practised sarcastic wit when I was at boarding school, polishing the technique when I got to Queens University in Belfast where I was a law student. I won lots of prizes for debating. Then I got into an argument at the Wellington Park Hotel with someone who turned out to be a BBC producer. He suggested I might like to contribute to a programme and that led to an audition which led to being trained as a BBC reporter.
READ MORE: Twitter flooded with tributes after passing of Derek Davis .
The best advice I can give aspiring broadcasters is: it doesn’t matter. Relax. When you are doing a piece to camera you don’t have to remember lines, just give information. We’re not heart surgeons or bomb disposal experts: we are just reporters. It is a rare occasion when it’s life and death. If it all goes wrong the worst is that you will be a bit embarrassed and risk a bollocking.
I got buried in the books from an early age. As a Catholic growing up in a Protestant town, quite a lot of activities, like the boy’s brigade and scouts, were closed to me on religious grounds.
I left the North because I was afraid of getting shot. I was scared stiff of the work I was doing as a reporter. I became an ABC stringer and wrote some comedy sketches for Frank Hall, taking the mickey out of country and western singers, following that, a promoter asked if I would consider fronting a showband down South. I was single, in my early twenties — so I said yes. Later on, I became a night editor in RTÉ.
I’m a newsaholic, I still read the papers from cover to cover every day and keep up with radio and television news.
My career has been a series of fortuitous accidents. There have been disappointments of course. I remember going for Director of Communications in RTÉ and not getting it.
I am far from disciplined but nothing concentrates the mind like having a family to feed. I worked like hell when I was presenting on RTÉ. I enjoyed it but needed rather than loved the work; it satisfied a deep seated need for affirmation. I’ve refused more work than I have accepted since I retired.
My biggest fault is a low boredom threshold. And tetchiness. I try to be affable but the older I get the crankier I become. I tolerate fools less and no longer worry about being overly polite.
The trait I most admire in others is creativity. I admire great wordsmiths. My mother was a painter and my father was an art dealer so I also appreciate talented artists.
READ MORE: Presenter Derek Davis dies, aged 67 .
I have always been passionate about boats and fishing, ever since my father took me to Donaghadee and gave me a rod and a fixed line to lure in the mackerel and pollock.
I am cheerfully agnostic. I have no idea if there is an afterlife.
I have just lost five stone. I had a major operation called a sleeve gastrectomy, a surgical weight-loss procedure where the stomach is reduced in size. I did it to improve both the quality and the potential length of my life.
I was diagnosed with diabetes 20 years ago and the heavy doses of insulin made it hard to lose or control weight. My organs were all under pressure and I was sure there was some nasty health scare, like a stroke or heart attack, in store for me, but part of me thought oh well I’ve had a great life. Then a year ago I became a grandfather for the first time and decided I wanted to stick around, so the surgery was a pragmatic decision.
It was a meeting with an endocrinologist, Carel le Roux, the heaviest hitter this side of the Atlantic, that convinced me about the operation. He asked me simply: were you overweight always? I said yes. He said ‘it is probably not your fault.’ I couldn’t believe my ears. I’d had fat guilt all my life — you buy into this — that it was my fault, because I had no moral fibre. But he said no, it’s all down to a hormone called GLP3 which is found in the gut. If levels of this hormone are low, you will eat more.
One major lesson in life has been: when things go wrong, don’t lie down and roll over."
READ MORE: Presenter Derek Davis dies, aged 67
READ MORE: Twitter flooded with tributes after passing of Derek Davis
