Woman’s Hour host chides ex Adrian Chiles in BBC pay row

THE gender pay-gap row, which has pitted broadcasting colleagues against each other, has now become even more personal. I can disclose that Radio 4 Woman’s Hour host Jane Garvey has accused her ex-husband and fellow BBC presenter, Adrian Chiles, of failing to speak out over equal pay. Adding insult to injury, she suggests that Chiles let down their two daughters.

‘I have talked to him about it,’ says Garvey. ‘I feel that some of the men at the BBC could have done a lot more to help.’

Chiles was the highly paid co-presenter of BBC’s The One Show with Christine Bleakley until the pair were poached by ITV in a multi-million-pound move to host ill-fated breakfast show Daybreak.

‘Adrian has got two daughters, so I know he would hate to be thought of as someone who didn’t understand the complexities of all this and wasn’t onside,’ Garvey says.

‘But it would have been really good if some of the high-profile male presenters at the BBC had actually pitched in and said, “We back you and we get this”.’

Speaking on a podcast, she adds: ‘But, if you’re a white man in Britain, how much can you ever hope to understand about the challenges of being a white woman, never mind a woman of colour or a disabled person? I just don’t think they can be expected to get it.’

There appears to be little love lost between Chiles and Garvey. When she was asked last year if she still gets called Mrs Chiles, she complained: ‘Every single year I get a Christmas card using that title and I don’t know who it’s from because I tear it into a million pieces.’

The pair split amid rumours Chiles was more than ‘just good friends’ with Bleakley — which they always denied — and divorced in 2009.

Bleakley went on to marry former England footballer Frank Lampard.