{"id":364456,"date":"2026-03-25T14:05:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T14:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/364456\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T14:05:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T14:05:08","slug":"wow-this-is-what-he-really-said-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/364456\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Wow, this is what he really said\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Huw Edwards<\/a> has not sat at a newsreader\u2019s desk since July 2023, when he was suspended by the BBC<\/a> following a report in the Sun that he had paid a teenager \u00a335,000 (\u20ac40,440) for intimate images and conversations. A year later \u2013 when new BBC News at Ten anchor Clive Myrie announced that his predecessor had been convicted of possessing indecent images of children \u2013 the Welsh broadcaster\u2019s career effectively ended.<\/p>\n

But on Tuesday the night of March 24th, Edwards is back on screen, reading the news in the late-night slot he occupied for decades. He is played by the actor Martin Clunes<\/a> and his BBC desk has been recreated in the London canalside news studio at Channel 5 by the producers of Power: The Downfall of Huw Edwards.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know because I didn\u2019t ask but I bet Michael Sheen<\/a> was offered this,\u201d says Clunes cheerfully in an interview room in the building.<\/p>\n

As Sheen is the market-leading actor-impersonator and also Welsh, this seems a good guess but the Channel 5 minder sitting in on our interview looks non-committal. Edwards was sentenced for \u201cmaking indecent images of children\u201d<\/a> (a legal charge that includes possession of digital images \u2013 seven of them category A, the most serious level of depicted abuse), so did Clunes have any hesitation about playing such a notorious figure?<\/p>\n

\u201cNo. Because it\u2019s my job. Roles don\u2019t take me over.\u201d<\/p>\n

Acting unpleasant or contentious people is a professional challenge. But Natalie Dormer recently announced that she had donated her fee for playing Sarah Ferguson, the former Duchess of York, in ITV\u2019s The Lady to sexual abuse charities, feeling it wrong to profit from portraying an associate of the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. This virtuous gesture, if it became routine, would lead to actors having to play villains for free. Did Clunes feel any pressure to give his fee to a good cause?<\/p>\n

He deflects the question with a joke \u2013 \u201cIt\u2019s Channel 5 so it isn\u2019t that much!\u201d \u2013 then adds more reflectively: \u201cI wonder if I will be attacked for being a straight man playing a gay man, which is very unfashionable these days?\u201d<\/p>\n

Clunes and the drama are careful to distinguish between Edwards\u2019s homosexuality (which he said in a court medical report had long been suppressed) and his criminal sexual interest in children. The former caused his first downfall \u2013 in the grooming of a young man \u2013 but his ruin came from the latter activities. The drama shows both sides of Edwards\u2019s life, including an online pursuit of a late-teenage boy, played by Osian Morgan (detail was provided to the writer, Mark Burt, by the real child\u2019s family) that led to meetings in person. That was not illegal but can be seen as an inappropriate use of his public profile by Edwards. \u201cThat\u2019s why the drama is called Power,\u201d says Clunes.<\/p>\n

Since his ITV dramas Manhunt, about the hunt for a murderer whose killings included Milly Dowler, and Out There, which looked at county lines drug gangs, Clunes has been playing hefty dramatic roles that fans of Men Behaving Badly and Doc Martin would not necessarily have expected. The trend continues with an impressively dissipated Mr Earnshaw in Emerald Fennell\u2019s Wuthering Heights<\/a> movie and now a very impressive Edwards. I compliment him on his film-stealing scenes as Cathy\u2019s drunken, cunning father, which show his developing range as an actor, but he replies: \u201cAfter 18 years of Doc Martin, anything else would look varied!\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Huw Edwards\u2019 staggering fall from grace leaves the BBC with serious questions to answerOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

That\u2019s too modest, and his dramatic versatility is further shown by his Edwards, suggesting the volcanic pressures of public pretence while achieving a Sheen-like lookalike and soundalike performance. Make-up involved \u201cno prosthetics, just …\u201d Clunes flattens his somewhat prominent ears against the sides of his head. \u201cI think they used some kind of putty. But, whatever they did, it was very clever because the camera comes right in behind me and you can\u2019t tell my ears are stuck back.\u201d The drama shows Edwards in the period when he had lost a considerable amount of weight and become chiselled and ripped through boxing and exercise. Did Clunes have to do a lot of gym work?<\/p>\n

\u201cNo. Obviously I\u2019m just blessed with a really great body! I lost a bit of weight. And then they had to reduce my lippage a bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

With those cosmetically thinned-down lips, Clunes copied another tic he had noticed in Edwards, an occasional curl that looked like a sneer: \u201cIt seemed to happen when he went for emphasis.\u201d Another mannerism captured exactly is the left arm held away from the body with the hand clutching the desk, as if the anchorman were literally anchoring himself in the studio.<\/p>\n

The drama is bracketed by Edwards\u2019s announcement of the death of British queen Elizabeth II on September 8th, 2022, remarkably only 10 months before the start of his disgrace.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really studied that clip,\u201d says Clunes. \u201cIt shows what a cornerstone of the British state he was and it is so well known that I had to get it exactly right.\u201d<\/p>\n

The result is an uncanny reproduction of Edwards\u2019s sober, slow tones on the last afternoon of the second Elizabethan reign, reading out the paragraph twice as if to give viewers a chance for it to sink in.<\/p>\n

\"FormerFormer BBC broadcaster Huw Edwards leaves Westminster Magistrates’ Court, where he was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment. Photograph: Lucy North\/PA Wire <\/p>\n

\u201cThey said did I want to practice with an Autocue. But I\u2019ve done Have I Got News for You for ever. And I\u2019ve even got my own Autocue at home.\u201d<\/p>\n

That seems one of the odder celebrity confessions. Why?<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, a lot of home recording during Covid. And, when you record things for charities, it\u2019s often a long read.\u201d<\/p>\n

As research, Clunes chatted off the record to former colleagues of Edwards who, while never guessing at the inner darkness, recalled an outer coldness: \u201cI spoke to a number of people who had come across him in a professional capacity. And they said a variety of things \u2013 I\u2019m not going to badmouth him \u2013 but let\u2019s put it this way: no one said he was fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

A sports broadcaster who often co-hosted bulletins with the newsreader drew Clunes\u2019s attention to Edwards\u2019s habit, although all his words were on Autocue, of hesitating and glancing down at the backup script on his desk before reading out a number: \u201cAs if pretending he wasn\u2019t reading an Autocue! It helped that there is so much archive but what I wanted was to find the bits when he wasn\u2019t on duty. I\u2019ve seen performances of real people \u2013 especially politicians \u2013 where you only get the person they presented to the public rather than the underbelly or the real person. And, with this, I had to get the off-screen him as well. For example, he\u2019s very slightly more Welsh when not presenting.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018Wuthering Heights\u2019 review: Less 120 Days of Sodom, more Carry on HeathcliffOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Clunes was intrigued by the presenter\u2019s appearances in the guest seat on talkshows and podcasts, including episode 232 of the BBC podcast Fortunately … With Fi and Jane [Glover and Garvey] that was taken down from BBC Sounds after Edwards\u2019s conviction. He also closely studied some 24-hour news footage from outside 10 Downing Street, in which, during another broadcast, Edwards is seen at the edge of the shot to present the 10pm live news later: \u201cWhile he\u2019s waiting \u2013 rather unfortunately given what happened \u2013 he\u2019s messaging on his phone!\u201d<\/p>\n

While the broadcaster\u2019s digital interactions that day could have been completely innocent, the clip of Edwards\u2019s phone technique was useful for the many texting and scrolling sequences in which he is grooming a young man.<\/p>\n

Because Edwards went from being the BBC voice of royal occasions to narrowly avoiding being detained at His Majesty\u2019s pleasure (receiving a six-month sentence suspended for two years), there can be a temptation to see his TV persona as fake.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not sure fake is the right word,\u201d says Clunes. \u201cPerformative but not fake. A sort of stepping up. My daughter says that when I\u2019m acting, I have a different voice from the one at home.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, his conversational tone is so soft today that I push the tape recorder closer to him. Also kept surprisingly quiet was the show itself: in a gossipy business, it feels a huge achievement to have withheld news of a drama about such a talked-about story. Had Clunes signed a non-disclosure agreement? \u201cNo. I don\u2019t think so.\u201d But he couldn\u2019t have gone on Graham Norton and said he was filming it? \u201cI don\u2019t know. No one told me not to.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Channel 5 minder explains that, unusually, the drama was not announced until after filming was complete and so was made in a covert way. While they were filming, in December 2025, Edwards posted on Facebook a moody image that looked like a new publicity picture, fuelling speculation that he was attempting a comeback. Clunes says the development caused fascination on set: \u201cWe wondered: had he heard about the drama? But there\u2019s no evidence that he had and he\u2019s taken it down now.\u201d<\/p>\n

English libel is so severe that \u2013 even in dramatising a convicted sex offender \u2013 the drama had to be careful not to suggest any action or motivation not supported by the Sun reports or in court proceedings. One scene with a psychiatrist, using a quote from the mental health report given to the magistrate, is as close as we get to going inside Edwards\u2019s mind. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really useful,\u201d says Clunes. \u201cWith that and the bits from factual WhatsApp messages in the dialogue, I did think: \u2018Wow, this is what he really said. It isn\u2019t speculation.\u2019 So there\u2019s an added weight to those scenes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MartinMartin Clunes was intrigued by the presenter\u2019s appearances in the guest seat on talkshows and podcasts. Photograph: 5 Broadcasting Limited\/Wonderhood Studios <\/p>\n

Although largely a documentary drama, Power: The Downfall of Huw Edwards has an extraordinary final fantasy scene in which the presenter reads from a newsdesk Autocue an account of his own conviction: \u201cAnd, finally, today I was sentenced …\u201d Here, Clunes makes effective use of that sportscaster\u2019s tip-off about Edwards\u2019s tic of emphasising figures, giving devastating impact to the number of indecent images (41), the quantity in the most abusive category (seven) and the age (between seven and nine) of the youngest children in the paedophile material he accessed.<\/p>\n

In that epilogue \u2013 perhaps seeming to suggest that Edwards got off lightly \u2013 might it come as a shock to many viewers to hear the unsparing details of what the former broadcaster actually did?<\/p>\n

Clunes nods: \u201cYes, I think that\u2019s right. I think there was a video of a child of [about] eight being raped.\u201d<\/p>\n

Could he ever allow himself to reflect on what Edwards might think about the drama or did he have to close his mind to that? \u201cWell, I don\u2019t think he\u2019d like it. But I mean he shouldn\u2019t watch it, should he? And he would have happily reported on other people committing similar crimes so that aspect doesn\u2019t worry me. There\u2019s no way back for him. People get forgiven for cheating on their wives and bit of tax evasion. But, this one, I don\u2019t think you do come back. I don\u2019t think we\u2019ll get a second series.\u201d \u2014 The Guardian<\/p>\n

Power: The Downfall of Huw Edwards is on Tuesday, March 24th at 9pm on Channel 5.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Huw Edwards has not sat at a newsreader\u2019s desk since July 2023, when he was suspended by the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":364457,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1578,93,164187,61,60,1577,4381],"class_list":["post-364456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-bbc","tag-entertainment","tag-huw-edwards","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-uk","tag-wales"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}