Jeremy Vine: BBC told me not to smile in £750k pay row

Ebullient broadcaster Jeremy Vine achieved notoriety when it emerged that his BBC pay dwarfed that of his colleagues — £700,000£750,000 in a single year.

but only now has it emerged quite how sensitive the beeb’s bigwigs were once this became public knowledge.

indeed, i can disclose that they went as far as giving Vine — an unmissable figure with size-12 feet and standing 6ft 4in tall — specific instructions about how he should disport himself in public.

‘i said to somebody “How bad is it?”,’ says Vine, recalling how he asked where he stood in the pecking order of BBC pay. ‘He said: “it is very bad.” i said, “Oh God, where am i? Am i in the top ten?” And he said, “it’s worse than that — you are in the top five. Just don’t be seen smiling outside the building.”’

Vine, who managed to rein in his smirk, says that his BBC handlers did allow him to make one key decision for himself. ‘i had to decide whether to be on the air the next day,’ he remembers. ‘“Of course i am going to be on the air. Why wouldn’t i be?” that was exactly my thought. but somebody said to me, “look, a few of the presenters are not going to be around.” i said, “Well, of course i am going to do my show.”’

the result was that he ended up interviewing ‘the guy who ran radio’, former labour minister James Purnell. ‘it’s the most bizarre interview of my career. “How can you justify paying me this much just to read out emails?” Only in the BBC…’

Vine’s mammoth pay packet resulted, he says, from notching up no fewer than five jobs: Points Of View, Panorama, eggheads, general election graphics and his duties as a Radio 2 presenter.

but his agent helped. in one memorable exchange, he told the BBC to ‘stop treating [Vine] like a chattel and pay him properly . . . Stop saying there is no more money as there is money for whatever you want it for, just find it and stop treating Jeremy Vine like a child, as he is sick of it now.’

Vine, it was later revealed, trousered £3,000 each time he hosted Points Of View; Samira Ahmed got £440 an episode to present newswatch. Vine’s BBC salary is now from £290,000 to £294,000, although he is doing less work for the broadcaster than he used to.