Upper crust name can cost BBC presenters the best jobs

BBC presenters could miss out on highprofile jobs if they have a double-barrelled name, a tribunal heard yesterday as a veteran journalist described the “whimsical, ludicrous, precarious business” of broadcast news.

Tim Willcox, a presenter on BBC news since 2004, said some executives valued “what looked right” ahead of journalistic integrity. Along with David Eades and Joanna Gosling, Mr Willcox is appealing against a joint tax bill of £920,000 in what is seen as a test case for more than 100 other presenters.

The three were told to set up personal service companies by the BBC in return for contracts that granted them a minimum amount of work. HMRC says the arrangement amounts to employment and attracts a different tax scale.

Mr Willcox said he was relieved to be offered a BBC contract because “I work in a very competitive industry where people fall in and out of favour”.

He told a High Court tax tribunal: “One is constantly at the whim of any new programme editor or whoever new comes in … It might be as simple as someone saying, ‘I don’t want someone with a double-barrelled name on the 10 O’clock News.’”

Mr Willcox presented the Chilean miners’ story in 2010, Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines in 2013, and the Charlie Hebdo terror attack in 2015.

But he said: “There have been several occasions where I’ve had calls before going on air from the managing editor saying: ‘I wanted to warn you that we’ve taken on a particular person and, as a result, the amount of work we can give you has been significantly impacted.’”

The case continues.