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4 hours ago
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A successful television presenter requires some combination of dependability, affability, ego and ambition. Dermot Murnaghan – who has died aged 68, after revealing a diagnosis of late-stage prostate cancer on screen last year – had some of the higher scores in the business on the first two metrics but among the lower on the others.
The reliability made him one of the few to have anchored news slots on the first four major UK networks – Channel 4, ITV, the BBC and Sky News – while the relative reticence held him back from the absolute front rank of TV journalistic celebrity, although he had sufficient sympathetic recognition for cameos on quizzes (Pointless Celebrities, The Weakest Link), as well as a spell shuffling the question cards himself on the BBC’s Eggheads. Looking and sounding like an anchor should, he was also regularly employed to announce fake news – not in the Trumpian sense, but headlines within dramas – on shows including Absolute Power and The Gunman and in the film Wimbledon.
While he was born in Devon, he and his family soon moved to Northern Ireland, where he grew up and was educated. After graduating from the University of Sussex, he started as a newspaper reporter but, as the more well-dressed members of that profession often do, soon moved to TV newsrooms.
The launch of Channel 4 in 1982 – soon followed by the introduction of breakfast television – had doubly expanded the broadcast news market and Murnaghan was an early beneficiary, working for Channel 4’s early morning service first as a business presenter and then a main host.
Because breakfast shows were required viewing for those preparing news lists for programmes later in the day, they could be a good showcase, as proved to be the case for Murnaghan, who moved to ITV’s news arm, ITN, in 1992. He was hired as a squad player – lunchtime bulletins, holiday relief on News at Ten – but journalistic careers often benefit from being in the right place for bad news, and it fell to Murnaghan to announce the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, after a car crash in Paris in August 1997.
Woken by his wife, Maria, who had seen early reports while up with the second of their four children, he headed to the studio. Some other anchors overdid emotion or historical pomposity, but Murnaghan characteristically delivered the facts with gravitas but soft acknowledgment of the near impossible shock it would seem to viewers.
As the breaking news of the princess’s death was frequently clipped in documentaries and TV dramas, this raised Murnaghan’s profile. The BBC, which had agreed to breakfast television for ratings reasons, still felt some guilt about a form of broadcasting it considered vulgar, American, commercial. So it appeased these feelings by putting respected journalists on the sofa, including Jeremy Paxman and Jeremy Bowen and, from 2002 to 2007, Murnaghan.
From the BBC, he made a final career move to Sky, where his air of gentle authority and long experience in slots from morning to night were proved invaluable to a fast-moving 24-hour news operation. His CV and demeanour were ideal for an operation that broadly aimed for the authority of ITN and BBC but with a lighter touch. His 16 Sky years were the capstone of his career.
Going freelance in 2023, he was deprived of the varied third act he deserved by the diagnosis of his illness. A reporter and communicator to the end, he used TV appearances as a guest – the last on Good Morning Britain in December 2025 – to encourage those in risk groups to seek prostate checks. As had been the case throughout his career, the audience was likely to listen hard and take seriously what he was saying.
