ROOM 101 Do Naga and her pals need a bit on the side?
“NEW” Lib Dem leader Ed “Less Chicken” Davey (right) claims he was once headhunted by MI6, home of 007.
Imagine it. “The name’s Oon,” he would mumble. “Buff Oon.”
IF you ever force yourself to watch the BBC News again, think about this...
How much is that person sat on the box in front of you getting paid to read the autocue?
I’m not talking about the much-discussed Gary Lineker, who still earns somewhere north of £1million from a high of £1.75m A YEAR for fronting Match of the Day.
No, I’m talking about those little heads that peer out at you in the morning while you sip your breakfast hangover tea and try desperately to not think about the bills piling up on the mantelpiece.
The people who are so damn cheery at 7am that you’d be inclined to kick the screen in if you had the energy to drag yourself off the couch.
Take Naga Munchetty, the pixie-haired BBC
presenter.
Swanky
Did you know that, for repeating the same stories on the hour every hour in the mornings, she gets £190,000 a year?
Maybe she’s worth it, I don’t know, but surely that’s enough to scrape by on – especially when she’s being paid directly out of a licence fee that YOU have to pay under the threat of jail if you don’t.
Yet it now emerges she has a sideline in hosting or moderating “corporate events” – swanky in-house get-togethers for those firms still with a few quid to spare on what are effectively staff parties.
According to The Sunday Times, for those off-BBC-books gigs she charges up to £10,000 a time.
Nice work if you can get it – especially if you don’t need it.
Then there’s the ever-lovely Fiona Bruce, who as well as helming the increasingly dull Question Time is also the face of the Ten O’Clock News and Antiques Roadshow and a few other programmes you’ve likely never watched.
Her cost to you, dear under-the-cosh licence fee payer? A mere £800,000 – a YEAR.
Yet she still has to pay the bills, the poor lamb, so finds herself charging up to £25,000 a time for after-dinner speeches, too.
They’re by no means the only ones, either. Loads of BBC News faces are at it, too.
Put aside the greed – what about if Bruce or Munchetty later find themselves presenting a troublesome story about any of these corporate titans whose shiny doubloons they had previously pocketed?
Shouldn’t they – like any MP is meant to do – declare an interest?
The Beeb got a not-sonew boss on Tuesday, another middle-aged white male BBC insider with a brief to shake things up.
High on his list should be to draw up a comprehensive reminder to those within the corporation that they are *only* there because of the licence fee payer – not in spite of them.
Auntie loves her slogans, so perhaps incoming directorgeneral Tim Davie will accept my suggestion for his new era:
STOP TAKING THE PISS.