BBC’s £200k Ahmed gets 3 months off to write book

The BBC already stands accused of indulging its many overpaid male presenters.

Now, in another example of the Corporation’s generosity, I learn its economics editor, £200,000-a-year Kamal Ahmed, has been given leave of absence to write a book, even though he has been in his current job little more than a year.

The book is Ahmed’s memoir of growing up in multi-racial Britain and is to be published by Bloomsbury next year, to coincide with the 50th anniverary of enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood speech.

Why Kamal, who grew up on the mean streets of ealing, West London, thinks he needs to write a memoir at the age of 49 is anyone’s guess. But eyebrows are being raised at the fact he’s been given three months off this summer to complete it.

A former newspaper journalist and spin doctor for the equality and human Rights Commission, Ahmed replaced Robert Peston as BBC business editor in 2014, despite having no broadcasting experience to

speak of before he was handed the plum post.

He is an old friend of James Harding, BBC head of news. The relationship between the City University journalism alumni is so warm that, while Ahmed was still working for a Sunday paper, Harding asked him to prepare a document on improving the BBC’s business coverage.

He then encouraged Ahmed to apply for the Peston post.

The BBC denied the suggestion that he got the job on account of his friendship with Harding.

Ahmed has had a lively love life, so let’s hope he finds room to mention all his conquests. After his second marriage to novelist Elizabeth Day broke down in 2015 he embarked on an affair with glamorous BBC girl Sophie Long. Kamal was the second BBC colleague to have fallen for the charms of Torquay-born Sophie: she previously had an affair with fellow married newsreader Tim Willcox.

Ahmed and Long split earlier this year, since when Kamal is said to have grown close to Poppy Trowbridge, 38, special adviser to Philip Hammond.

A friend of Ahmed says the leave is unpaid.