NEW to television news on the island, former SKY news and CNBC correspondent Roderick Pratt feels he has no reason to be elsewhere on the planet.
“I was working in Paris before coming here but I missed being a news presenter. I saw an advert for a newsreader in Cyprus and I decided to give it a go. And I haven’t really felt compelled to go back. I news read but I also do some work for CNN.”
English-speaking CyBC viewers have become used to the face of Andreas Iacovides as the presenter of the daily evening news bulletin. But the soft-spoken newsreader may have now met his match in 49-year-old Pratt, whose chiselled looks, public school English and professional manner could soon establish him as an institution in English speaking households on the island.
Although Pratt admits he will first have to tackle the tongue-twisting Greek names.
“I have fortunately got some time to practice them and write them down. I don’t think it’s going too badly,” he grins.
“Obviously, to start with, I was a bit apprehensive of being able to convey them in a way that anyone would be able recognise. But I think if you try and break them down into two parts it helps a little.”
Born and raised in Harrogate in North Yorkshire, Pratt attended public school and stumbled upon journalism by chance.
“It was complete circumstance really,” he recalls. “I was convalescing from an appendix operation and my mother fixed me up at my local paper while I was in hospital. I didn’t like it at first but decided I would stick it out and not long after that I began to love it.”
Rising up through the ranks of his local paper, Pratt then left the green pastures of Harrogate and moved to France where he got married and joined international news wire Agence France-Presse.
Since then his media career has taken him far and wide. Besides doing stints working for WTN, Euronews and London’s Capital Radio, he has lived in Switzerland and Belgium, and travelled much of America, Europe and the Far East in the course of his career.
“Most of my jobs I have loved,” he says. “It’s been an interesting unplanned journey through the media.”
But though wanderlust may eventually get the better of him, Pratt is happy to sample the joys of Aphrodite’s island for the foreseeable future.
“I’ve been here two months, and it’s lovely to get back to TV,” he says with relish. “It’s only when I got here that I realised how much I had missed it. It’s a great work environment at CyBC. I enjoy living here. Even if I was to leave I would like to maintain contacts here.”
SEVEN QUESTIONS
What car do you drive?
I don’t drive at the moment but if I stay a while I will get a Landrover. You don’t need a car in London or Paris but here you do eventually need one
Describe your perfect weekend
I would wake up in north London, have brunch in Highgate or Crouchend. Walk around Ally Pally, watch international rugby in a pub, get the Eurostar back to Paris before dinner. And see the children there on Sunday morning and go out of town to a nice country restaurant for lunch. Then I’d hop on a plane back to Cyprus, reading of course, the Sunday Mail on the way
Assuming you believed in reincarnation, who or what would you come back as?
I don’t, but going along for the ride, I’d be the heir to a family business comprising a vineyard, a fruit orchard, a restaurant and a little production studio
What is your greatest fear?
Approaching the twilight years feeling I hadn’t done enough for my children
What is your earliest memory?
Age four proposing marriage to a little neighbour of ours and then rowing with my older brother over who had first option
What did you have for breakfast?
Toast and coffee as usual. No marmite as I’m out of it. But that’s normally a key ingredient too
What was the last item of clothing you bought?
Jeans that I bought in Paris on my last trip there
