Gender gap Humphrys quizzed over comments in BBC pay row

VETERAN BBC broadcaster John Humphrys was asked at Cheltenham Literature Festival if he was a “misogynist” after making “offensive” remarks about a former colleague.

During a mostly relaxed interview with journalist Georgina Godwin, Humphrys got a taste of his own medicine when she confronted him about the Carrie Gracie row.

The BBC’S former China editor resigned in 2018 over the corporation’s gender pay gap.

Before this, former Radio 4 Today programme host Humphrys said he “didn’t realise there was a gender pay gap as such”.

He later took three pay cuts before his retirement in September and insisted at the festival that the next director general of the BBC “must be a woman”, saying it was appalling there had never been a female director general in its 100-year history.

The real row in 2018 was over a recorded conversation between Humphrys and USA editor Jon Sopel in which he said: “How much of your salary you are prepared to hand over to Carrie Gracie to keep her?”

The ‘personal’ conversation was recorded and became public.

“It was stupid of me,” he admitted of the “jokey” exchange.

“I didn’t apologise for what I said, I didn’t say anything offensive.”

When Godwin said she had found it offensive, he retorted: “I thought the whole point of it was that men were earning too much and women too little, so a man takes a pay cut. That doesn’t address the issue?”

Later an audience member asked Humphrys if he was a misogynist because of his remarks, which he said he found offensive.

The Sunday afternoon event started softly and was full of titbits audiences lap up, such as the fact that he had initially turned down the job offer to present Mastermind, that his family name is actually Humphreys but the registrar had spelt his name wrong on his birth certificate, and how he had once asked the Queen for an interview over tea at Buckingham Palace (she refused).

He covered topics such as his poor upbringing in Cardiff, where measles and whooping cough were facts of life, and how his mother insisted he and his siblings got a good education.

Humphrys said he was only seven years old when he decided to become a reporter – inspired by the comic-book journalist superhero, Clark Kent. At 15 he got a job at his local paper and from then on luck had him in all the right places.

The secret to being a successful journalist, he said, was luck: “It’s being in the right place at the right time.”

He spoke fondly about being a reporter, saying: “In journalism the only job that really matters is a reporter. You need it or democracy doesn’t work.”

During a quickfire round Humphrys revealed that he had voted remain in the 2016 referendum.