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The Spectator's Notes

Charles Moore

Wednesday, 4th June 2008

Charles Moore's reflections on the week

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. What it is saying, in other words, is that everything in the area of public service broadcasting should be done on the cheap and everything which resembles the commercial rivals has to be expensive. Brilliant!

By the way, even if it is a wonderful idea to pay Mr Ross roughly 30 times more (annualised) than the Prime Minister and 20 times more than the Governor of the Bank of England out of what is, after all, tax, it is obvious rubbish that this does not push up the market. If the BBC were not competing in this field, Mr Ross’s price to commercial channels would plummet.

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Peter M Reynolds

June 6th, 2008 4:52pm

I also received the letter to which you refer in your article under the heading "reflections on the week ". Gerrards are at the moment my stockbrokers (I was formerly a partner in the stockbroking firm Albert E Sharp which eventually became Gerrards).
What actually upsets me most is that I was the guy who employed the writer of the letter,although is must have been perhaps 20 years ago !

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