Rajan rage: Outcry grows over new University Challenge host

THE BBC is facing continued backlash over its decision to make Amol Rajan the new University Challenge host, with one respected broadcaster asking whether the corporation ‘only has one presenter’.

Colleagues have also been left ‘seething’ after the Today show host’s appointment as Jeremy Paxman’s successor because ‘he gets every gig going’.

And yesterday it was claimed that Rajan, 39, pictured, was handed the role even though two female presenters were told they would get a screen test, before the BBC backtracked on this offer.

There is concern that the broadcaster has opted to appoint another male host for the UK’s longest-running quiz on TV. Bamber Gascoigne was the only other person, prior to Paxman, to have presented the show.

It was announced this week that Paxman, 72, would be stepping down from the show after 28 years. Last year the ex-Newsnight host revealed he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.

Times Radio presenter Mariella Frostrup took a dig at Rajan’s appointment, tweeting: ‘Are BBC cuts now affecting staffing so badly that they only have one presenter? Love Amol Rajan but what about the likes of Mishal Husain, Samira Ahmed, Kirsty Young. Would have been so great to see University Challenge finally go to a woman. It’s only 2022 after all!’

A member of the public responded: ‘Perhaps it just went to the best candidate regardless of sex. Get off your sexist high horse.’

But one senior BBC insider also told The Mail+: ‘People are seething. He gets every gig going. They pay him so much that they have to find him stuff to do.’ It emerged this week that Woman’s Hour presenter Emma Barnett, 37, and Front Row host Samira Ahmed, 54, had been acting as standby presenters for Paxman in recent months. Miss Ahmed said on social media she would love to present the show. But two days later, the BBC confirmed Rajan had been appointed.

The Sun yesterday reported that Miss Barnett and Miss Ahmed were told they would get screen tests but this never happened. A BBC source denied these screen tests had been promised.

Rajan, who is the corporation’s media editor – a role he will give up later this year – has also been given his own major TV interview series. In the past, he has presented for The One Show and Radio 2. Last year he was paid up to £329,999 by the BBC for his work at the corporation.