Derek Davis

Derek Davis (26 April 1948 – 13 May 2015) was an Irish broadcaster. On television, he co-hosted Live at 3, presented Davis at Large and Out of the Blue and won Celebrity Bainisteoir. Early life Davis was born in Bangor, County Down to a Protestant father and a Roman Catholic mother (a native of Bray, County Wicklow). He attended St MacNissi's College, a former Roman Catholic boarding school in County Antrim and described his early childhood life as ecumenical. During his childhood he acquired a love of boats which later provided the inspiration for the TV series Out of the Blue (1998). Television Davis started as a news reporter with the American network ABC and BBC Northern Ireland before spending 11 years in the newsroom in RTÉ. In the early 1980s he became a newsreader for The Six-o-clock News and began to become well known due to his sometimes off-the cuff comments on news stories. Davis impersonated Big Tom on the RTÉ satirical programme Hall's Pictorial Weekly. He was offered a part in a show-band in Cork as a result of this. After a ballroom tour, he joined RTÉ proper in 1975, initially to work as a television news reporter, eventually becoming newsreader on the nine o'clock news.