Ephraim Hardcastle

rADIO 4’s news presenter eddie Mair, 52, remarks wittily that he’s leaving the BBC after more than 30 years ‘before I’m so old my sentences make no lasagne’. I hope he’s in line for severance pay after the Corporation’s recent request to take a pay cut. A Mair critic inside the BBC says: ‘The question he’s best known for asking (on BBC2’s Newsnight, to then-London mayor Boris Johnson in 2013) was: “You’re a nasty piece of work, aren’t you?” It was selfcriticism, really.’