To mark the TV50 year, RTÉ launches ‘A Little Bit TV’, a series of eight profiles of well-known and much loved Irish television presenters.
Programme 5: Derek Davis
Derek Davis has had one of the most varied and colourful careers in Irish broadcasting. His iconic status as daytime TV host belies a background in hard news. He started his broadcasting career in the BBC in Belfast in the early 1970s, the worst years of the Troubles, and followed this with a stint as a Big Tom impersonator on the RTÉ satirical show Hall’s Pictorial Weekly.
After a follow-up ballroom tour came to an end, he joined RTÉ as a television news reporter in 1975. Ten years later Derek left a plum job as newscaster on the nine o’clock news to host a prime time TV entertainment show. In 1986 he found yet another niche when he joined former continuity announcer, Thelma Mansfield, hosting popular daytime programme Live at Three. Then he made the leap from the sofa to riding the waves of a long-running marine series. Most he won the Celebrity Bainisteoir cup without breaking a sweat – unlike the time he hosted the Rose of Tralee…