Even before talk-show hosts Stephen Colbert and then Jimmy Fallon picked up on his reporting from Lviv in Ukraine in six languages, Luxembourg-born Philip Crowther’s self-edited video clip had gone viral. But after Colbert played the video and said that the multilingual reporter was “having the time of his life”, followed by Fallon praising Crowther for having “nailed it”, views of the clip went ballistic. The video in Crowther’s original Tweet from 22 February has now been viewed 25.5 million times.
A graduate of the Athénée de Luxembourg, Crowther, whose father in British and mother is German, left school with the grand duchy’s three official languages under his belt in addition to his father’s native English and Spanish, which he started learning at the age of 14. He has since added Portuguese while a student at King's College London.
Now based in the United States, Crowther is an international affiliate correspondent for Associated Press’s Global Media Services. It is a role that “we kind of invented ourselves,” he explains. “What we’ve been doing has been so successful--especially over the last year and a half or so--that we are now looking for more people who can do live broadcasting in several languages.”
Maintaining Luxembourg contact
Crowther maintains close contact with Luxembourg. He regularly reports from the US and other countries for 100,7 public radio and RTL television on the hot issues of the day--everything from the US presidential elections to the George Floyd murder, from the Cop26 climate summit to the war in Ukraine.
“One of the interesting things for me about keeping contact with Luxembourg…is that I’m always in touch with Luxembourg officials,” he explains. “Any story I cover I try to get the Luxembourg angle.”
He is due to return to Ukraine soon. “We are doing rotations, so for me it’s a case of in and out every few weeks, and we expect to be doing that throughout this war,” he says. On a happier note, he also has an assignment to cover the World Cup in Qatar lined up for later this year.
Meanwhile, he will be the guest at Delano Live on Thursday 19 May for an on-stage talk that promises to deliver fascinating insight into his career, his linguistic talent and plans for the future. He has promised to come armed with a hatful of anecdotes.
Details of the event and how to sign up can be found on the .