BBC paid Naughtie £175,000 last year after just 23 hours on air

JIM NAUGHTIE, the veteran Today programme presenter, was paid £175,000 by the BBC last year, five years after stepping down from the top job.

Naughtie was appointed special correspondent for the Radio 4 programme when he retired in 2015 after serving as presenter for more than 20 years.

A report in The Sun newspaper yesterday claimed Naughtie had been paid the six figure sum after being on air last year for just 23 hours. But last night the BBC rejected the claims, saying he did far more work than his on-air broadcasting for the corporation.

The corporation has been under pressure to justify the high salaries of some of its top talent in the year it was asked to make major budget savings.

But a BBC spokesman yesterday said the report was “factually wrong”.

“Jim is one of the most recognisable voices on radio but listing some of his on-air hours does not represent any of the behind-the-scenes work he is involved in. This list is incomplete and doesn’t include, for example, Jim’s work for the BBC World Service.”

The spokesman would not disclose how many hours of radio airtime the veteran presenter had actually completed in the 2019-20 financial year.

Pay of £175,000 for 23 hours of work would amount to £7,608 per hour, or £126 per minute.

Mr Naughtie’s work in the year in question included eight hours on Radio 4’s election night programme with Emma Barnett as well as high-profile interviews with John le Carré and Bernard Ingram. The news comes after the BBC released the pay of its top presenters and journalists, revealing the £1.36million earnings of Radio 2’s Zoe Ball.

Gary Lineker, Graham Norton, Steve Wright and Huw Edwards completed the top five salaries. Andrew Bridgen, a Tory MP, told The Sun: “This expenditure would be indefensible at the best of times but certainly not when they are charging over-75s for a licence fee.

“I don’t know how BBC bosses can sleep at night. These huge salaries are paid for off the backs of pensioners, some of the most vulnerable in society.”

Staff pay at the BBC increased by 3.5 per cent in the past year to reach a total of £1.5billion. Critics said it was wrong for pay to continue to increase while changes to the licence fee meant over75s now had to pay.

Tim Davie, the BBC’S new directorgeneral, defended the pay of his staff and said he would expect top talent to come to the corporation at a “significant discount to what they’d get in the open market”.