Matt Baker gets the big bucks but Liz Bonnin is the true star
Alaska. a land of ice beyond the arctic Circle, more far-flung even than the Gold Rush mountains of the Yukon, an american outpost so remote it is practically in siberia.
Many of the overpaid BBC male ‘star’ presenters and their hapless chauvinist bosses must wish desperately that they could find sanctuary there from the public’s opprobrium over their salaries.
In fact, one of them — Matt Baker, £450,000-a-year presenter of The One show and Countryfile — has recently been there . . . for Wild Alaska Live (BBC1).
How symbolic that he was accompanied by one of those underpaid women presenters, liz Bonnin, whose talents make her twice the presenter he’ll ever be and whose name doesn’t appear on the BBC Rich list. Baker is paid at least three times more than wildlife expert Bonnin, who got a Masters in animal conservation with the Zoological society of london and Royal Veterinary College.
In alaska — where the weather can be horrendous even in summer — Bonnin battled for days to reach her target location, a river teeming with salmon and hungry bears.
It wasn’t only the bears tucking in to the fat Pacific salmon. sleek black-and-white killer whales with teeth like steel man-traps were
SOIRéE OF THE WEEKEND: As Jane Austen is honoured on the new £10 note, her most ardent fans were dressing in Regency gowns at elegant dances in My Friend Jane (BBC2). It all looked quite barmy, but very civilised.
scything through the waters, too. Dan Olsen, a scientist armed with a waterproof microphone, has studied the orcas so closely for ten years that he is able to recognise individuals by their voices, sometimes just from a single squeak.
Each family develops its own language, Olsen explained, passing down the unique calls and phrases to each new generation. Every pod has its own repertoire of underwater songs: ‘It’s kinda like your favourite rock group.’
This wasn’t the most spectacular footage of killer whales ever screened: that accolade must go to the 2009 David attenborough series life, which opened with a breathtaking sequence of orcas hunting seals.
But the programme was packed with information, and beautifully photographed amid dramatic scenery. Wildlife film-making is one of the things the Beeb does well.
Enjoy it, and try not to remember that it takes more than eight TV licence fees to cover Matt Baker’s salary for a single day.
Mel Giedroyc also made the BBC Rich list, collecting between £150,000 and £200,000, but she certainly didn’t earn it as presenter of the live Pitch Battle (BBC1). after one of the numbingly bland song contests, all middle-of-the-road pop under a glitterball, like cruise ship karaoke, Mel dashed up to one group and found she couldn’t remember who was who.
By the time she had worked out their names, it was too late to ask any questions. Then, while viewers were phoning in their votes to choose the winner, she compared one of the choirs to slytherin, the evil Harry Potter wizards. attempts to talk her way out of the blunder just made it worse.
If that was an insult, the panel of guests, including pop stars Jermaine Jackson and Chaka khan, looked mortified to be told they resembled a row of Madame Tussauds waxworks ‘with less wax’.
Mel won’t be asked back (lucky for her she’s to get a new job with her former Bake Off buddie sue Perkins to front a revamp of BBC’s The Generation Game) but Pitch Battle is unlikely to return either. It’s been dismal.
How can a contest that is billed as a battle between amateur choirs feature a five-piece vocal group in the final?
If five singers qualify as a choir, then so do the Beach Boys. Not that the mercurial Beach Boys should be mentioned in the same breath as Pitch Battle — that’s sacrilege.