Revealed: The stars milking millions from your TV licence
The most successful TV personalities are paid obscene wages Every boy racer was itching to host Top Gear
NEWSFLASH! There’ll be nothing on BBC TV tonight, thanks to a wildcat strike by the Union of Presenters, Luvvies And Telly Entertainers (UP-LATE) in protest at their long hours and dismal pay.
Like junior doctors, they’ve decided they don’t get enough money or perks. Some of the poor darlings can barely afford a weekend cottage in the Cotswolds. Normal service will be resumed when they feel properly loved again.
Don’t worry, though, for of all the things that you might fear in the world, the idea of the BBC’s biggest stars walking out because they’re not paid enough undoubtedly isn’t one of them.
Not only are their careers their lifeblood — screen time is the rocket fuel for their super-sized egos — but, as Chris Evans freely admitted last week, they’ve achieved the rare position of being rewarded extremely handsomely for doing something they love. We’ve compiled the details of the most jaw-dropping Beeb salaries and, as you’ll see, it’s little wonder that the BBC is known as the Big Bucks Corporation.
It’s common for TV personalities to set up their own private companies for their BBC income. By careful analysis of these records at Companies’ House, we’ve uncovered the wage packets of some of the BBC’s biggest stars.
The figures will make your head spin. For an hour or so on screen, presenters earn an absolute fortune. Alan Yentob’s sleep-inducing arts show, which is broadcast late at night to what could never be described as a prime-time audience, earns him a whopping £12,000 per episode.
Every time Andrew Marr deigns to get out of bed on a Sunday morning to present his current affairs show, it’s another £10,000 in the bank. Not to mention the staggeringly lavish £125,000 Chris Evans will earn for every episode of Top Gear.
Some of the names and wage packets in our list were due to be revealed by the BBC — albeit reluctantly — after the Government announced last week that all stars earning over £450,000 a year would be forced to disclose their income, as part of a drive to improve transparency.
But many of the astronomical salaries in our dossier would have remained under wraps, as a significant number of BBC stars earn just under the £450,000 cap.
So as well as knowing the precise salaries of the Beeb’s highest rollers — including Gary Lineker (£1.8 millon), Graham Norton (£1.3 million), BBC2’s Jeremy Vine (£800,000) and The Voice’s will.i.am (£600,000), we can tell you how much of your licence fee money goes to MasterChef’s Gregg Wallace (£300,000), Have I Got News For You’s Ian Hislop (£400,000) and Antiques Roadshow’s Fiona Bruce (£500,000).
And so it goes on. It seems the most successful BBC television personalities receive frankly obscene wages, pocketing more in a year than the average person will make in a lifetime.
Take Gary Lineker, the BBC’s highest earner, who collects more than £51,000 for every episode of Match Of The Day that he fronts.
The unspoken truth is that, as well as being an extremely generous employer, the BBC provides an unparalleled platform for Lineker to hone his earning power elsewhere. Why else do you think he makes millions advertising crisps? Lineker’s supporters would argue that he’s worth his corn because other stations would pay him more.
But top presenters know only too well that the kudos of working for the most famous broadcaster on the planet is the engine of their careers.
No matter how talented they are, without the Beeb, they’d be sunk.
Morecambe and Wise, whose BBC Christmas Specials were the most popular comedy shows ever screened on British telly, went out like lights when they moved to ITV in 1978. Indeed, those who abandon the Good Ship Beeb often don’t realise until too late the benefits of all that BBC exposure.
Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson was the BBC’s highest earner, until he was sacked for punching a producer in 2015. Within weeks, he signed instead with Amazon Prime, taking his co-stars James May and Richard Hammond with him.
The trio are believed to have signed a deal with the online broadcaster worth more than £60million, but we shall see how they fare away from the BBC’s protective umbrella.
Meanwhile, every boy racer in showbiz was itching to take over. Chris Evans, who buys sports cars as though they were Dinky toys, would have sold his granny into slavery to present the series. So would former Friends actor and avid petrolhead Matt LeBlanc.
So why did the BBC have to lure them with so much money?
Our paygrade table reveals that LeBlanc gets half a million and Evans is paid double that. Evans joked that, as TV presenters are basically part-timers doing a job they love, they ought to be paid far less. He can get away with that, confident that no one in the BBC’s highest echelons dares call his bluff.
Because if the stars weren’t showered with banknotes, there’d be no excuse for paying the management such exorbitant fees.
BBC director-general Tony Hall has a £450,000 salary, with department chief executives paid barely less. James Harding, the director of current affairs, for instance, gets £340,000, while TV Controller Charlotte Moore is paid £264,000.
They can only command their inflated salaries because the presenters receive so much more. And it’s us who’s footing the vast bill for the lot of them, the big winners at the Big Bucks Corporation.