Las Vegas With Trevor McDonald

The polite reporter elicits startling confessions
Ben-Felsenburg-colour-176They say the Queen can talk to anyone and Sir Trevor McDonald has that same magical quality: simply deploying respect and curiosity, he draws out confessions from the most extraordinary range of people. Las Vegas With Trevor McDonald (Monday, ITV, 9pm) continues Sir Trevor’s great renaissance since he gave up newsreading and returned to his roots as a reporter, nowadays with a globetrotting brief.

This gentlemanly visitor is clearly split between horror and fascination for the ‘four-milelong shopping mall for the seven deadly sins’. The characters could be out of a Damon Runyon tale – take the tough-talking broad who reassures him: ‘No one ever gets killed here,’ but then adds the unnerving rationale: ‘They would always take them across state lines…’

Granted an audience with Mike Tyson, former heavyweight champion of the world and once a byword in notoriety, Sir Trevor finds a soft-spoken pussycat who has no interest in looking at his boxing trophy cabinet and would far rather show off his children’s drawings adorning the fridge. Then there’s the masked man who claims to be a ‘non-violent pimp’ and makes, he says, hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from each of his ‘girls’. Like a masterly barrister, Sir Trevor asks his questions in the most polite tones, effortlessly ensnaring this reprehensible criminal, who is damned by his own words.

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