Despite this, and a PTSD diagnosis from years of reporting devastating stories from war zones, he admitted the decision wasn't instantaneous. The 24-hour news cycle which required not just reports for the main evening news, but updates, radio reports and online news articles, had made his job more demanding and he gradually began to reassess his priorities. "I'm thinking to myself, 'I don't want this. I do not want it...it's too much pressure. And just physically, can you imagine what that's like? I'm 65 years of age.”
It took an incident in January 2025, just over a year before he eventually left, to fully convince him the time was right to step down.
He had a fall in an airport while he was racing to catch a connecting flight to get to Greenland on an assignment. He came down heavy on his knee and said he felt like an "aul fella”.
"My mind has enough to be dealing with, right? With my own stuff, keeping myself on the straight and narrow, trying to have some level of contentment without all of that on top of it,” he said in an interview with the Sunday Independent.
Announcing his departure from the Beeb earlier this year, Fergal said: "I leave with a natural degree of sadness but with immense gratitude to the organisation and the people I have been privileged to work alongside.
The BBC remains the greatest public service broadcaster anywhere in the world. To go when I still have the drive and curiosity for fresh challenges was always my plan," he said.
Fergal began his career with the corporation in 1989 when he was appointed Northern Ireland correspondent. Just a year later he moved to the role of South African correspondent in 1990 where he remained for four years. During that period he covered unrest in the country, the first multi-racial elections following the end of apartheid, and the genocide in Rwanda. In 1997 he won a BAFTA for Valentina’s Story, one of his films on the territory.
In 1994 he changed tack again becoming the BBC’s Asia correspondent. He was based in Hong Kong for the handover from the UK to China, ending more than 150 years of British rule in the region.
