When Gary Lineker made a series of public interventions on asylum seekers’ treatment by the last Tory government, right wing newspapers were outraged that a man who took £1.35m a year from the BBC should be allowed to express his political views. The fall-out resulted in a new set of rules for flagship presenters of BBC shows, and Lineker has since lost his job presenting Match of the Day.
Last week, the Pointless host (in every sense) Alexander Armstrong gave an interview to the Telegraph in which he attacked Keir Starmer’s decision to out VAT on public school fees. “I’m feeling really, really angry about that, and extremely poor,” he said. “There was something really vituperative about [Starmer] bringing it in in the middle of the school year… It felt really unpleasant and nasty.”
Since Pointless is not made by the BBC, Armstrong’s payment for it does not have to be disclosed by the corporation, Yet an estimate by the Telegraph last year put him on a possible £20,000 per episode, which would work out at £1.1m per year. Have the Telegraph, Mail, and Sun raged against this political comment by someone whose wages are paid by all of us via the licence fee? Oddly, they have not.
