Sports presenter Lee McKenzie: 'Men can be shambling wrecks on TV. That would get me taken off air'

At last year’s Wimbledon, a remarkable thing happened. The panto villain turned into the principal boy. Nick Kyrgios, the baddest of the bad earlier in the tournament, became the guy the Centre Court wanted to win it. This transformation - not with a fairy godmother’s wand but a TV microphone - was the work of Lee McKenzie.

The Scot who interviews the players on the grass for the BBC stresses there had been no grand plan. No deliberate act of unsolicited image improvement for the highly combustible Australian. But there is little doubt that in her choosing the right moment and the right questions, the crowd began to think differently about tennis’ biggest controversialist and understand that, besides the contests that happen across the net, he must also battle himself and his black moods.

“I can still see him at the end of the match, sat by the umpire’s chair, head in his towel,” recalls McKenzie of Kyrgios’ quarter-final victory, a typical mash-up of tweeners and trick shots, thunderous serving and a face like thunder directed at his box, apparently for not exalting him to the heavens enough.

“He was taking it all in and he was upset. I didn’t want to rush him. If I’d walked onto the court right away either he’d have had to jump up or I would be left looking like an idiot. One or the other. There were messages in my ear [from the producers]: ‘Get on the court, you’ve got to do this interview.’ I could hear the commentators ‘filling’ - they were probably hating me. But I think Nick was grateful that I’d given him some space. Eventually he nodded, signalling he was ready, and for all that these interviews amount to maybe just three questions, he got quite personal.”

Sports presenter Lee McKenzie, who hails from Ayr.

The conversation features in the latest instalments of Netflix’s Break Point released this week, the docuseries where Kyrgios admits that at one stage the blackness had him contemplating suicide. Before that quarter-final, he’d given the impression he could take or leave tennis, confessing to once leaving it as late as 4am on the day of a match before his agent was able to drag him out of a pub.

Says McKenzie: “So I asked: ‘You’ve suggested days like this don’t matter - but they do, don’t they?’ He said they did. I mentioned that he liked to walk to his own beat and he admitted that no coach would have him and that he wouldn’t wish that job on anyone. That got a lot of laughs, and then a lot of applause.”

McKenzie reiterates: the interview did not prompt a miracle conversion; barley water into wine or somesuch. It was but a small portal through which the fans warmed to a new rebel hero - “Nick is the exact polar opposite of what Wimbledon is,” she says - who they then cheered all the way to the final. Where, after rounding on a noisy spectator who he suspected had been enjoying too much wine - “700 drinks” indeed - he lost to Novak Djokovic.

New balls please. Next chapter upcoming. Ayrshire-born McKenzie will pitch up at the All England Club on Monday, a week before play begins, to begin interviews previewing the tournament. First on her list: some guy called Sir Andy Murray.

Lee McKenzie has interviewed stars of F1, tennis and horse racing.

We’re talking on Zoom, McKenzie at home in Oxford, a base chosen for its proximity to airports for a woman with a globetrotting, multifarious, sports hosting lifestyle. What I can see of the house does not suggest she’s there all that often. Right enough, she left for Silverstone yesterday and won’t be back in her own bed until the beginning of August, with Channel 4’s coverage of the British Grand Prix interrupting the tennis then F1 spiriting her away again, right after the winning volley has been struck.

It all sounds incredibly hectic. Exciting for sure. Great fun at times. Yes, glamorous, too. But hard work goes into it. These questions aren’t just plucked out of the warm air of an English summer or the somewhat less fragrant atmosphere of a racetrack paddock - research is required. She’s a journalist by trade and, at 45, by three decades worth of experience, having started while still at school filing rugby reports for the Ayrshire Post and an equestrian column, “Horsing Around with Lee McKenzie”.

Now she could launch a YouTube tutorial: “Suitcase-Packing with Lee McKenzie”. Her skills are semi-legendary on the F1 circuit. “I’m the best,” she laughs, as Sebastian Vettel can confirm. “We were chatting by an airport carousel. He couldn’t believe I wasn’t collecting a big case. He said: ‘Only hand luggage? I can’t wait to see what you’re going to be wearing this weekend.’ I said: ‘Three full outfits, two sets of gym kit, my make-up and all my notes for interviewing you. There’s nothing a four-time world champion needs to worry about!’ I take candles with me. Stuff to create a home-from-home. If I’m working away in December, an advent calendar. An F1 colleague messaged the other day: ‘I’m going to try and pack the Lee McKenzie way but I’ve never been so nervous.’ ‘Go for it,’ I replied. ‘This will change your life.’”

A good book? There's room. All-time favourites include PG Wodehouse and Agatha Christie. “Nothing that will shake me to the core; when I get downtime I’m trying to relax.” But never for too long. When she needs to rev up again, return to the here and now of the real world: “I love reading about geopolitics.”

Now, crossing continents for F1, broadcast teams and race teams together, it sounds very incestuous. So can such a cosy, clubby scene be bad for the job and make rigorous questioning tricky? McKenzie says not: “I’ve been on planes where two drivers who’ve just crashed into each other have found themselves sitting together and not a word will pass between them the whole flight - so me asking them questions will be the least of their worries. I wouldn’t have this job and be privileged to fly round the world with it if I did not ask the right ones and sometimes the difficult ones. I’m not paid to be friends with the drivers and it’s the same with tennis players. I say that to their faces. Sometimes they might go: ‘Woah!’ But I am there to do a job and if I don’t do it properly then I can be replaced, just like that. I don’t have a God-given right to be doing it and there are a lot of people trying to get the job off me.”

Did someone say cosy? Certainly not this year. The threat of climate protest by the likes of Just Stop Oil has seen to that. “This will be the story of the summer,” she says. “I’ve just come out of meetings about Wimbledon and it was pretty much all we could talk about. Will there be disruption? In F1, even though there’s now a cost cap restricting what teams can spend on cars - much to their horror, a limit of less than $150 million from what was double that previously - it would make much more sense, if that’s the word, for protesters to try and stop a car race rather than a horse race. Examining all eventualities, someone is going to be killed, hit by a car and probably seriously injuring the driver as well. This wouldn’t be orange dust tipped onto a snooker table.”

Growing up in Alloway right in the heart of Burns Country, McKenzie’s career choice was determined at a young age while following the fortunes of another local scribe. Her sports journalist father Bob was dispatched to the Mexican Grand Prix when the Daily Express’s regular F1 correspondent was off sick. McKenzie tuned in to the race on TV and was immediately hooked. She became “that annoying child”, tagging along with Dad when he reported on Wimbledon, squeezing onto press-box benches and, first time at Melrose’s Greenyards, not quite believing she was sat next to the great Bill McLaren. She was 15 when she reported on Ayr RFC, her English teacher allowing her time off lessons for the write-ups. A long-held ambition will be realised this autumn when she covers the Rugby World Cup for ITV.

The other day, buying a car in Galashiels from retired touring car champion John Cleland, she reminded him how he helped her secure a first byline in a national paper - the old man’s Express - when still just 15. “I don’t know if a kid would get that sort of break now. I was very lucky.” Studying journalism at university, rather than earn money for clothes by working in a bar, she freelanced from rugby grounds, 100 words for one paper, 300 for another. Sometimes her copy would be scrunched up and thrown right back at her. At the Express’s London office she witnessed hacks “screaming and shouting at each other”. Ah, Fleet Street’s glory days.

One of McKenzie’s best days on the job was at Monza, Sir Stirling Moss showing Lewis Hamilton the wonders of the Silver Arrow. Moss called her “Crumpet” but she wasn’t offended. Last year, though, Gabby Logan revealed how early in her TV career she’d been subjected to sexual jibes speculating on how many men she’d had to sleep with to get on in the job. Has McKenzie suffered similar or even a #MeToo moment? “No, thankfully. If I had, my father would have destroyed them.” We discuss that unreconstructed era in journalism some more and I mention how women on my first papers would always be assigned to the softer stories - golden weddings and farm shows - rather than the big, important front page stuff reserved for the men. McKenzie admits: “I’m not a fluffy person and so wouldn’t have given off the vibes. I did my television training at Border TV. There was a presenter’s slot going, a wee thing showing off kids’ birthday cards and their terrible drawings. I applied but was told I was way too scary for it!

“Listen, I’ve never woken up saying: ‘I’m going to be the best woman asking questions today. I always want to be the best regardless. Ethnicity, gender … let everyone have a go at this. Nobody should be prohibited. But there also comes a moment when you just have to be good. If you’re not then you’re undoing all the progress. One of my mantras is: ‘Be so good they can’t ignore you.’”

Now McKenzie is laughing again. Indeed there is more of a level playing field these days between men and women on the telly but for she and her kind, appearance cannot be deceptive. “Some men on camera are absolute shambling wrecks. Women can’t get away with that. Men, particularly on the news, can be massively overweight and look a complete mess. If I rocked up like them I’d be taken off air. Which is why, after my 6am filming at Silverstone, I’ll be diving straight into the gym.”

McKenzie is always prepping for the next big event so perhaps on the cross-trainer she will have been thinking about what to ask Andy Murray. “I love watching him play. Regarding the Big Four now I think it’s dawning on us that we’re very much on borrowed time in our enjoyment of them. I can’t imagine we’re ever going to see their likes again.

“But wasn’t it lovely that Andy won in Nottingham on Father’s Day with his kids surprising him by being in the crowd? And wouldn’t it be wonderful if, after all he’s been through - the hip, the comebacks and the setbacks - he gave us one more great Wimbledon?”