I'm telling the stories of people who trusted others utterly & paid for it with their lives

JUST because we can no longer hear Dermot Murnaghan's familiar voice presenting the evening news, it does not mean he is silent.

- MATT ROPER

His loved ones, listening to him screaming at the TV in frustration, know this as do the families of murder victims in his new series.

His fifth series of Killer Britain with Dermot Murnaghan starts tomorrow and gives a voice to the friends and families whose lives were torn apart by brutal crimes.

Dermot says he was struck by "how ordinary a lot of these events are, until they lead to the extraordinary awfulness of the murder.

"Everyone knows people who are in deteriorating or inappropriate relationships.

"A lot of the stories in this series are about really nice human beings who trusted someone else utterly, and they were turned upon and paid for it with their lives." He covered many of the murders featured in the 10-part series during his 30-year career presenting news on ITV, BBC and Sky.

But Dermot, 67, who left Sky News in February 2023, admits switching from the interviewer's seat to a sofa at home as a normal TV viewer is "incredibly frustrating". He boils over when politicians get off lightly in an interview.

He says: "I'm throwing soft shoes at the television screen and knocking the radio over when I hear it, because that's my obsession, I can't give it up.

"If I hear another politician say 'nothing's off the table' or 'we're doing this for the national interest', I'm just screaming. 'Of course you are, but what are you doing?! What the heckityheck does that mean?"" Not that he thinks he was any better at on-air grilling. There are some brilliant people operating, way, way better than me.

"But I think the politicians have got way more adept at side-stepping questions." His is equally unimpressed by former live newsreaders, no longer under an Ofcom ban on appearing on adverts, popping up in ad breaks. "Some of the things they advertise, well, I'll leave it there." But he doesn't leave it there: "Gold sovereigns at four times the price that they actually do cost.