Mair: I didn’t refuse pay cut

EDDIE Mair has hit back at reports that he is leaving the BBC after refusing to take a pay cut, claiming his departure has nothing to do with money.

The veteran broadcaster, pictured, will move to talk radio station LBC following 31 years at the corporation and two decades at Radio 4’s PM. He described the decision as ‘my choice’, led by a ‘desire to do something a little different after 20 years in one job’.

Mair’s departure, announced on Sunday, comes after reports that he was resisting a pay cut as part of the BBC’s commitment to sort out its gender pay crisis.

Mair, 52, was earning between £300,000 and £349,999 a year, and had not yet come to a formal agreement with the BBC about his wage being reduced.

But writing in the Radio Times today, Mair says it ‘tickled’ him to learn that he was ‘apparently refusing’ to reduce his own salary. ‘None of my thinking has been influenced by the BBC’s pay problems,’ he says. ‘I’d offered, in writing, to take a cut.’