Did Mair’s final-day sick note pass sniff test?
Radio 4 host in row over pay cut brings an end to 30-year BBC career by crying off his last shift
FOR someone who has been such a presence in listeners’ lives for so long, it was a brief, almost brutal farewell.
After more than 30 years at the BBC, Eddie Mair, the award-winning broadcaster and presenter, went out not with a bang, but with a sick note. Mair signed off from what turned out to be his final edition of Radio 4’s PM programme on Wednesday with loyal listeners unaware that would be the last they would hear of him.
Explaining why he wouldn’t be in yesterday, Mair, 52, wrote: “I’m sorry I’m not in the office today as planned. I seem to have picked up one of those 48 hour bugs. Atishoo.”
The departure came after he denied refusing to take a cut in his £300,000£350,000 salary. He said last month that it “tickled” him that he was “apparently refusing” to accept a reduction. “I’d offered, in writing, to take a cut,” he told the Radio Times. “Honestly, this was my choice. I didn’t want to be counting the days to retirement.”
When his departure was announced last month, his final show was billed as being on Friday, Aug 17. But in an email to the show’s production team he explained he could not come in yesterday as he had a cold. And anyway, he said, his appearance on Wednesday had been the “perfect” way to go.
In a move typical of his understated and quirky style, his final act on PM had been to close the show with a Willie Nelson cover version of the Morecambe and Wise song Bring Me Sunshine.
In his email he said he preferred it that way: “There was no way to match that for a last Eddie programme. So that’s what it was … my last PM. It felt right then and it feels right now. No fuss or faff, just as I wanted. Genuinely unplanned, and with its origins in a listener idea. Perfect.”
Mair’s understated farewell could not have been in greater contrast to the long, glitzy, goodbye laid on for Nick Grimshaw, who yesterday ended his Radio 1 Breakfast Show with a “greatest hits” montage of clips from old shows featuring celebrities including Simon Cowell, Harry Styles, Adele and Daniel Radcliffe. “It’s been the best. I’ve had the time of my life being here and thank you for listening, everybody,” said Grimshaw, who is to present an afternoon drive-time show at the station.
Dundee-born Mair, known for his deceptively reassuring manner, is said to have launched his career by commandeering his school’s public address system to broadcast to his friends before bagging a regular slot on his local station, Radio Tay, at the age of 17.
His departure from the BBC – he will present a new show on LBC next month – follows reports that he had refused to renegotiate his salary to help redress the corporation’s gender pay gap.