Dyke slams celebrity salary culture

12 April 2012

The BBC will lose public support if it pays enormous salaries like the £6 million earned by Jonathan Ross, the corporation's former director-general Greg Dyke has said.

He also said the suspension of star presenter Ross - who famously boasted his pay package was worth 1,000 BBC journalists - demonstrated "what goes around comes around".

But Mr Dyke said the resignation of Radio 2 controller Lesley Douglas was a "serious loss" and arguably "deeply unfair", and that the corporation lacked leadership "at the very top" during this week's lewd calls furore.

Writing in the Times, he said: "If the BBC is to pay enormous sums to artists, such as the £6 million a year it pays to Ross for, to be fair, an enormous amount of presenting work, then it must understand that it will lose public support.

"There is always a price that is too high for a publicly funded organisation to pay."

Mr Dyke - who led the BBC before current boss Mark Thompson - said Ross's pay package was prompted by a £4.5 million offer from Channel 4. "The BBC should have said, very reluctantly, goodbye."

He advised Ross: "Don't say you are worth more than a thousand journalists even if it is a joke. Journalists are not known for their ability to laugh at themselves and what goes around comes around."

Mr Dyke resigned in 2004 after the Hutton Report and the row caused by claims by Today journalist Andrew Gilligan.

He said the BBC had "probably" not been damaged as a result of the lewd phone call scandal.

"Over the years the there have been many weeks like this and the BBC has survived and prospered," he said.

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