Brightening up the weather forecast

Northern Ireland folk are famous for making small talk and big news out of the weather: whether it's about our inclement drizzle or slightly warmer drizzle, it's a perennial topic of light conversation which keeps us endlessly amused.
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BBC Northern Ireland weather presenter Geoff Maskell pictured in Belfast City Centre.
Picture By: Arthur Allison.Pacemaker Press.:
BBC Northern Ireland weather presenter Geoff Maskell pictured in Belfast City Centre.
Picture By: Arthur Allison.Pacemaker Press.
: BBC Northern Ireland weather presenter Geoff Maskell pictured in Belfast City Centre. Picture By: Arthur Allison.Pacemaker Press.

And Geoff Maskell, 45, who has been delivering the weather forecast for the last four years on BBC Northern Ireland, shares this fascination, claiming he never gets bored talking about what’s happening in our skies.

‘‘Gosh no, it is infinitely varied and there is always something of fascination about it. I love it.’’

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The weather report is a soothing end to another bad-news update. “And now the weather,” the newsreader says, audibly relieved. We like it delivered by a cheery human, so that even if a deluge of rain is forecast it doesn’t seem so bad.

And this is what Geoff Maskell does with aplomb, conveying the forecast in his gentle, assured English accent.

It also helps that he feels very at ease in front of the cameras. ‘‘I have done a lot of live reporting and it’s always the place where I feel most at home, most alive, so to have a job where it is all about live delivery is a real positive for me,’’ he says.

However, he is at pains to point out he is a weather presenter and not a meteorologist; in other words his job is to turn complicated, high-falutin science into the simplest terms possible for the masses.

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‘‘The forecast comes from the meteorologists at the Met Office, the storytelling comes from us. Our job is to digest that information and tell it in a way that will be impactful and will stick with people.

‘‘If you sit and watch the minute and a half, two minutes, we are on air, you will come away thinking I know what I need to do tomorrow, in terms of what I’m wearing, what I’m doing.’’

Geoff Maskell has worked as a journalist for 20 years, employed across all areas of the business from reporting, producing and presenting, on both radio and television.

He describes his current role as the ‘‘perfect job.’’

‘‘I absolutely love it. It is without question the best job I have ever had.’’

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I meet Geoff Maskell in Belfast on a day when the weather is bone-chillingly cold... Storm Doris is waiting ominously in the wings.

He’s just done the lunchtime weather and warns that things are going to take a turn for the worse, but adds there is no such thing as ‘bad weather’.

‘‘There is just inappropriate clothing and my job is to let you know what the day is going to bring and allow you to make the most of it, whether that is curling up in front of the fire with a good book because it is going to be horrible outside or snapping the lead on the dog and going off for a 10-mile hike.’’

Whilst we chat, I can’t help but notice his natty Scrabble letter cuff links.

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‘‘You’ve got to have the jacket cut a little bit up so you can show a little bit of cuff link,’’ he laughs.

‘‘I don’t think men get to express themselves very much, it’s quite pared down with a suit, so cuff links and ties are the things I like.’’

Indeed he’s something of a cuff link curator with about 20 pairs, including some Fender guitar-shaped ones.

Like all television presenters he is always sharply dressed for the cameras, but says he is definitely not a shopper.

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‘‘I shop twice a year and it takes me about 10 minutes,’’ he laughs. Geoff Maskell is from Hampshire. His mother is a teacher and his father a civil servant. He had a ‘‘standard, normal and very happy upbringing.’’

At school he was an enthusiastic scholar.

‘‘History was my thing - that was my absolute passion,’’ adding ‘‘ I always wanted to work in television, that was a very early ambition.’’

He attended University in Birmingham where he did Modern History and Political Science. He did his journalism training in Portsmouth and got a job half way through that course working in commercial radio, a year later he moved to the BBC and he’s been there ever since.

‘‘Before I moved to Belfast I was presenting the early breakfast bulletins in the East Midlands and I was the political correspondent there for a while. Before that I had been a sports editor and a district reporter.’’

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He adds: ‘‘I’ve done just about every job in local radio and a pretty varied set of jobs in regional television as well; I’ve produced political programmes, I’ve worked as a political correspondent - so it’s very odd having covered the 2010 general election as a political correspondent, to then go through the last general election and have no involvement at all.’’

So how did he end up over here?

‘‘My wife Susie wanted to come home - she’s from Donegal.

‘‘We met through the BBC, she was working for the BBC in London and we met through the BBC Yacht club.

‘‘One Friday evening I walked into a pub, waiting to go sailing the next day, and there she was stood in the middle of a bar - I put my bag down and I said to my mate Simon ‘I don’t who that is, but I’ve got to get to know her’.’’

So was it love at first sight? ‘Oh absolutely. Thunderbolts.’’ he says, coining a meteorological term.

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‘‘It was pretty amazing. It took a year for her to notice me really, and then we got engaged six and half weeks later after starting to go out. We got married a year later in 1999.’’

Geoff needed a job here, and, as luck would have it one was advertised for a weather presenter.

‘‘I am a qualified yacht skipper and part of the training for that was meteorology, so at least I had a practical application and understanding of the weather.

‘‘I thought ‘it’s a live presenting job, I’m good at live presenting, it’s about weather, I know a bit about weather, so I’ll give it a whirl.’’

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He got the job and had some training with the Met Office before he went on air and since then has been doing an Open University course and a course with the University of Exeter.

‘‘The study that I have done is because I am interested in it, because I want to be better at what I do.’’

And he has become something of a celebrity on these shores, with people recognising him in the street and in supermarkets.

‘‘That was the biggest change about coming to Northern Ireland and doing this job,’’ he laughs.

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‘‘Even if you have been off work for three or four days you always have to be across what the weather is doing, because everyone wants an individual forecast. It’s very rare to go out and not have somebody say ‘hello’.’’

We know forecasting is ultimately a mug’s game: the rain doesn’t care whether or not that nice lady or gentleman promised it wouldn’t arrive.

“If you want a guarantee buy a toasters, it’s a forecast - it’s not set in stone,’’says Geoff.

And, weather presenters, we must remind ourselves, are not directly responsible for the weather. Nor can they be blamed when the enormous and uncontrollable forces of nature blow the wrong kind of cloud our way just as we put the washing out.

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‘‘We do the every best, with the very best technology available to get the best forecast possible and most of the time we get it right,’’ says Geoff.

‘‘Sometimes we get weather where, if you’ve got an area of low pressure coming through, literally the difference of 50 to 100 miles in the track of that low can make the world of difference to the weather that you experience - but actually the forecast is right because you have said there is a low pressure coming in at about this time- but just the offset “