Veteran radio DJ Desmond Carrington left behind estate worth £720,000
Old (male) favourites axed to make way for ladettes as BBC battles sexism claims
BROADCASTER Desmond Carrington left an estate worth more than £720,000, it has emerged.
The BBC Radio 2 stalwart died aged 90 in February last year following a long battle with cancer and Alzheimer’s.
He had only hung up his microphone a few months before, after a remarkable 70-year career which began in 194 as a professional actor.
Carrington, pictured below, was best known for his weekly evening show The Music Goes Round, which he presented from a converted barn on his farm near Dunning, Perthshire.
His recently published will has revealed he had an estate valued at £724,866 at the time of his death. Carrington’s wealth included a half-share in his £700,000 property in Perthshire and shares and dividends in his own media company worth around £100,000. The veteran DJ also had more than £200,000 in bank accounts.
After leaving gifts totalling £10,000 to friends and relatives, Carrington instructed the remainder should go to his long-term partner Dave Aylott, who was also the producer of his show.
Carrington’s first radio stint was in 1946 as a member of the BBC’s Drama Repertory Company. He also produced shows for Radio Luxembourg and the BBC.
But it was The Music Goes Round that made him a household name, as he entertained his listeners with music spanning every genre. In 2016, Carrington announced he was stepping down from hosting the show, which he had fronted since 1981, due to ill health.
He told listeners: ‘I wasn’t too well after my 90th birthday and it has been a bit difficult to carry on with the 36 happy years I’ve had making the music go round, so reluctantly I’m going to hang up my headphones.’
Following his death, Bob Shennan, director of BBC Radio and BBC Music, said: ‘Desmond was a warm, caring and generous man who was much loved by the Radio 2 audience and all those who had the pleasure of working with him during his illustrious career.’
BOSSES at BBC Radio 2 have cleared out veteran male DJs and replaced them with women as the Corporation desperately tries to battle sexism claims.
Jo Whiley, Sara Cox and Cerys Matthews, who rose to fame in the ‘ladette’ era of the 90s, have been handed new shows on the station as part of the shake-up.
Miss Whiley, 52, will become the first female DJ on the station’s weekday daytime schedule for 20 years in May. The last was Debbie Thrower, presenting the station’s afternoon show between 1995 and 1998.
She will co-host a new drive-time show with Simon Mayo, who previously had the slot to himself.
Cerys Matthews, 48, will take over the Blues Show, and Sara Cox, 43, will swap her existing Sound of the 80s show for four 10pm shows each week. Gary Davies will take over Miss Cox’s previous slot.
Miss Whiley and Miss Cox were Radio 1 DJs, while Miss Matthews is the former lead singer of nineties pop group Catatonia.
However, their promotions this spring will come at the expense of long-standing male presenters.
Blues Show host Paul Jones, 75, the former Manfred Mann frontman, is leaving the station after more than 30 years. Nigel Ogden, 63, and Frank Renton, 78, are also out, after bosses axed their respective shows.
Mr Ogden’s The Organist Entertains had been running for 50 years, and he had spent 38 years as its host.
Station chiefs have also axed Jonathan Ross’s Arts Show, but insisted yesterday that they are still talking to the broadcaster about ‘future presenting opportunities’.
The radical shake-up comes as the BBC faces unprecedented pressure to tackle the shocking pay gap between its presenters.
Radio 2 emerged as one of the leading culprits for paying huge sums to men when the BBC was forced to publish salaries of its 96 highest-paid stars last summer. Its DJs accounted
‘Committed to featuring women’
for four of the Corporation’s seven biggest earners – Chris Evans on £2.2million, Graham Norton on up to £900,000, Jeremy Vine on up to £750,000 and Steve Wright on up to £550,000.
Its all-male lineup sparked criticism from Women’s Hour host Jane Garvey, who said the station was ‘extraordinarily male, entirely pale and [with] big salaries.’
Astonishingly, Radio 2 boss Lewis Carnie later claimed that the station was not a part of the BBC’s gender pay problem. He told the London Evening Standard: ‘On a per-show basis, the pay gap doesn’t exist.
‘We wouldn’t care what anybody is – gender, sexuality or ethnic origin – it’s totally irrelevant. What’s important is the talent, and they’re paid according to that.’
He did not mention that women had only been allowed onto the fringes of the weekday schedule.
Radio 2 finally appeared to address this yesterday after BBC boss Lord Hall issued an edict that the broadcaster must close its gender pay gap altogether by 2020.
A spokesman said the BBC ‘is committed to featuring more women across our output and we’ll be achieving our 2020 pledge by doing so in different ways’, giving Miss Whiley’s new role as an example.
It comes as Corporation staff reel from the shock resignation by Carrie Gracie, who quit as China editor on Sunday in protest against the ‘secretive and illegal’ way that the BBC handles pay for men and women.