I’m worth every penny Beeb pays me, says Mac

JOHN McENROE has hit back at critics of his BBC pay packet by maintaining he is worth every penny of what he is paid to work at Wimbledon. The former Centre Court firebrand believes male and female broadcasters should be rewarded on the basis of merit, rather than gender. Martina Navratilova ignited a Wimbledon pay row earlier this year when she revealed that in 2017 she was paid a tenth of what her 59-year-old fellow ex-champion received. Now McEnroe, who will be back on the screens next week, has insisted that the worth of on-air talent is difficult to quantify, but that he deserves the £150,000plus he earns from the state broadcaster. ‘It’s not a black-and-white issue,’ he said. ‘I don’t think it’s simply like people receiving the same pay, you’re not going out and playing Wimbledon or the US Open, this is a totally different animal. ‘We can agree on that, right? It’s sort of like if you work at a magazine or a paper and there’s a woman and man — you’re going to get paid based on the job that you do in the opinion of the paper. Right? And if the girl does the better job she should get more money. That’s what it boils down to.’ McEnroe is unaware what his fellow commentators and presenters are paid, including Navratilova. However, the former ladies champion earlier this month hinted strongly that she had received a substantial pay rise in the wake of the wider BBC pay debate. She tweeted that she would be working for the corporation at Wimbledon this year, saying that she was ‘very happy’ and that ‘it’s good to see the BBC taking gender pay equality seriously’. This contrasted with her comments in March, when she told a Panorama investigation: ‘I’m not happy. It’s shocking — it’s still a good old boys’ network.’ McEnroe (left) has transformed himself from an enfant terrible as a player to a hugely popular fixture on the nation’s screens during Wimbledon fortnight. Of his work with the BBC, he said: ‘I’ve been fortunate it has given me the opportunity to present myself in a different way. At least people see me in a slightly different light than they saw me on the court, so I think it’s been mutually beneficial, hopefully. ‘I get to see the game through a different lens to when I was playing. Certainly in the beginning things were rocky (at Wimbledon). So it allows me to get a behind-the-scenes look and be part of presenting it.’