BBC radio star sets example by slashing fee to just a third

MIchAEL Berkeley’s Private Passions, the Radio 3 show which celebrated its 20th anniversary this year, is ‘probably the best programme on radio in Britain’, according to the novelist Ian McEwan.

So it appears particularly harsh that Berkeley, a distinguished composer as well as broadcaster, should be made to bear the brunt of wasteful BBc’s cuts.

The presenter, appointed Lord Berkeley of Knighton in 2013, told the Lords following the announcement of the BBc’s licence fee settlement: ‘cuts have been made and I am prepared to reveal to the house as an example — and here I declare an interest — that I was asked to take one-third of the fee that I used to get for my programme on Radio 3.’

A generous Lord Berkeley, who did not specify what his original fee was, added that he ‘did so happily in the interests of cutting costs’. But did the BBc ask talent paid far more than the Radio 3 host, such as Nick Grimshaw, presenter of the failing Radio 1 Breakfast Show, to make a similar sacrifice?

In 2010, one of the BBc’s highest-paid

presenters, Graham Norton, was reported to have taken a pay cut of 10 per cent. However, the Irish chat show host’s then new two-year deal was said to be still worth about £4.5 million.

The BBC boasted in March of making ‘vast’ cuts to its celebrity wage bill — but still paid stars a total of nearly £188 million last year.

Its 14 highest- paid presenters, thought to include Norton, Chris Evans and John Humphrys, took home nearly £ 12 million between them, figures show. A further 230 were paid between £100,000 and £500,000.

The figures appear in a report commissioned by the Corporation’s governing body, the BBC Trust, which congratulated it on the ‘great’ progress it has made in cutting its celebrity wage bill.

Evans is expected to be paid up to £5 million over three years for his new role presenting Top Gear and his Radio 2 breakfast show, pushing him past Norton and Match Of The Day host Gary Lineker.

But the fate of the BBC can no longer remain a private passion for Lord Berkeley. ‘Do the Government feel happy about seeing the squandering of a national asset through 1,000 slashes?’ he asks.