Sir Trevor McDonald claims he once turned down a job at the BBC after being told they had "come under pressure by the Race Relations Board to hire more black reporters".
The 80-year-old newsreader thought he had been offered an interview with the corporation because they had heard about his TV reporting career in his native Trinidad and Tobago, but when he found out the other reason he rejected their offer.
He said: "I got a call from somebody at the BBC saying ‘Could you come over, I’d like to interview you.’ There was a lot of white wine and smoked salmon sandwiches and I thought, all my ships were coming in at once. I should say, I thought getting a call from BBC TV meant that he had heard that I had done some TV in the West Indies.
"It was very, very early in my career. Trinidad and Tobago had television very late but when it came in, I read the news on television and I did a discussion programme and I thought this guy had heard this.
"I thought, ‘Wow, I’m being offered a job on the BBC.’ This conversation went on for a while and then he said, ‘You know, we’d really like to have you because we have come under pressure by the Race Relations Board to hire more black reporters.’
"The smoked salmon suddenly stuck in my throat and the white wine tasted not as nice as it had done before."
Trevor admits he turned the job down because he wanted to be "employed on merit" rather than because of his skin colour.
Speaking on ‘The Jonathan Ross Show’, he added: "My reason was, I have only small philosophical problems with this idea of positive discrimination.
"But I did not want to be employed solely because I was black. I wanted to be employed on merit.
"So I thought he had heard about my reputation in Trinidad as a television news reader and he then disclosed that he’d never heard that Trinidad and Tobago television in any way, shape or form.
"So I made my excuses and left. I turned down the job. I recognise that in some places, like the transition in South Africa when 80 per cent of the population were shut out from any kind of proper jobs, when that changes you have to use methods of positive discrimination, you have to give black South Africans more of a chance.
"But I’ve always felt that if you are employed solely on that basis then people would say, ‘I know why he’s got that job,’ or, ‘I know why that lady, that woman has got that job,’ and we aspire to a society which is more genuine in what it does and so I turned the job down.
"That seemed to be the basis on which that offer was being made to me."
‘The Jonathan Ross Show’ airs Saturday (02.11.19) at 10.20pm on ITV.
Trevor McDonald reveals why he rejected BBC job
