Gargantuan

caught many by surprise. So have the overall figures and the levity with which Gary Lineker (up to £1.8 million) joshed about Chris Evans earning £2.25 million from Auntie’s coffers. BBC offices are agog at the publication of information that was once shrouded in secrecy — nor that daily radio hosts look at the largesse showered on DJ Nick Grimshaw and Vanessa Feltz at Radio 1 and 2 and are, to put it mildly, curious as to what this says about the Beeb’s priorities.

So was Hall surprised by the response, particularly to the revelation of Grand Canyon-size gaps of remuneration between household-name men and women? “I knew there’d be huge interest,” he says. “Not least because people identify so strongly with the BBC. Our stars are people they invite into their living rooms: audiences they feel they know them.”

I wonder whether BBC bosses have been a bit dozy on the issue down the years. Hall declines politely to criticise his predecessor Mark Thompson (though that appears to be the implication) and points out that he has heavily promoted the number of female high-earners to top-tier jobs since he re-berthed at the BBC in 2012 after stints running the Royal Opera House and as deputy chairman of Channel 4.

“In areas like drama we have got there already,” he notes. The number and prominence of women on the Ten O’Clock and Six O’Clock news has increased, with “woman after woman coming up”. A couple of examples follow, though the list of women in the upper-mid tier staffers in news and current affairs, between £150,000 and £200,000, is truly scant. I suggest that the numbers are still a long way adrift of full potential. He nods.

Encountering Hall in his days as head of news in the late Nineties, he was one of the few BBC suits who did seem to take the quest for female talent and diversity seriously. But the gap between intention and outcome remains wide in large institutions.

He says he wants to “manage female careers” much more pro-actively in BBC cadres, both in management and on air, rather than leaving women to somehow find mentors or hope to make their way through some arcane board process, of a type that the BBC comedy W1A parodied.

How does Hall feel about revelations that he and his management team opposed making public? “We won a lot of arguments [with government], like the 11-year charter agreement in difficult conditions,” he replies, equably. “We didn’t win this one.” He says he thinks he will “have to manage inflationary expectations and, to some