Never having watched Jonathan Ross, I have no opinion as to whether he is worth £18 million over three years, which is what the BBC is said to pay him. But the news that the BBC Trust had just reported that the BBC was not distorting the market with its huge payments to such stars happened to come on the same day that I was telephoned to ask if I would appear on a BBC television programme. Having discussed the subject matter, I said, perhaps in rather a sarky tone, ‘Will I be paid for this honour?’ ‘Oh!’ exclaimed the researcher, rather as if I had asked him to remove his trousers, ‘Oh, I’ll have to find out about that.’ The BBC is the only organisation for which I have ever done any work in which the people who seek your services get in touch without knowing what they will pay you. This must be a deliberate policy, based on the generally correct assumption that you will say yes anyway. Eventually, I got an email promising me £75. When I last did Any Questions? on Radio 4 a few months ago, I was paid £222 (which includes the ‘repeat fee’). When I first did the programme, in 1984, I got paid, I think, £125. Can there be any other branch of journalism where the increase has been so small in a quarter of a century? The reason, presumably, is the desire to divert everything to Mr Ross and co. I would need to make 240,000 £75 appearances on the BBC to catch up with Mr Ross. Obviously, nobody cares about the plight of petty contributors such as myself, but licence-payers might note that the Trust has decided that the BBC must pay Mr Ross all this money because this is ‘competitive’, but that it is paying too much to news presenters because this is not.
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