Making the most of the spotlight

The big names who have used the BBC to broadcast their own views

In the wake of the Gary Lineker row, it has been pointed out that other BBC stars could be argued to have broken impartiality guidelines by expressing political opinions...

Lord Sugar

The star of The Apprentice has been vocal during his 18 years hosting the hit BBC One series, yet has never been disciplined. In 2018, he tweeted a doctored image of the then Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn sitting next to Adolf Hitler in a car at a Nuremberg rally, writing “many a true word spoken in jest Corbyn”, before deleting it and apologising.

Nadiya Hussain

The BBC Great British Bake Off winner, under the judging of Mary Berry, called Theresa May “a monster” on Twitter in 2018 for ordering an air strike in Syria. She deleted it and the BBC insisted at the time that she was “not a BBC staff member and her personal social media accounts are not connected to her work as a BBC presenter”.

Richard Osman

The face of Pointless, the BBC’S hit teatime quiz show, tweeted in 2019: “I try not to tweet political opinions, but as it’s my birthday allow me just one. The Tories do want to sell off the NHS. Not in one go, just bit by bit until it’s unrecognisable. You’ll turn up one day and there will be a priority waiting room. They’ve always been open about it.”

Baroness Brady

Lord Sugar’s co-star on The Apprentice is a Conservative peer and a Sun columnist. In her columns this year, while the series is on TV each week, she has called on Rishi Sunak to put Nicola Sturgeon’s trans reforms “in the bin”, and accused the Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, of “desperately trying to fudge and obfuscate”.

Dame Mary Berry

The Great British Bake Off’s lead judge for years, she told The Guardian in 2012 that “it’s essential” that cooking skills become part of the national curriculum, saying she “cannot understand why children aren’t given lessons in it”. She also told BBC Radio 4 that she was “not so sure” about the Conservative Government’s sugar tax in 2016.

Martin Compston

The Line of Duty star, who plays Steve Arnott in the BBC’S most successful drama in recent times, is a passionate supporter of the Scottish National Party. He wrote in 2021: “Scotland’s future is in your hands. Don’t leave it to chance. The only way to make sure we re-elect Nicola Sturgeon as First Minister is to make it #Bothvotessnp.”

Chris Packham

The Springwatch presenter told the annual Bafta television lecture in 2020 that political leaders such as Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro and Vladimir Putin could one day be seen as “genocidal maniacs” for their inaction on climate change. Mr Packham also hailed Extinction Rebellion as “the first real hope of making a bigger difference”.