Graham Norton has hit back at critics of his BBC salary, arguing his and Gary Lineker’s pay is dwarfed by the biggest earners at ITV.
The chat show host describes the annual revelation of what the BBC’s stars are paid as intrusive and annoying, blaming it on nosy politicians who dislike the Beeb.
He said: “That’s what’s odd about this situation, for the top 20 of us at the BBC. For some reason, MPs want to know what people at the BBC earn.
“If they could get ITV to tell them what Phillip Schofield gets, they’d love to know.
“Also, what would really shock the public is to discover the disparity between ITV and the BBC. People would go, ‘wow’.”
Norton, 56, earns £610,000 for his weekly Radio 2 show and TV specials such as Eurovision – plus up to another £2million for his chat show, which is not included in the figures as it is made by an external production company.
Schofield and co-host Holly Willoughby are thought to be on £1.7million for their various ITV projects but Simon Cowell , Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly take home around £8million a year.
Norton’s chat show predecessor Jonathan Ross was paid £6million a year before he left for ITV in 2010. He now earns around £2million.
Norton told Radio Times: “You may hate me or Gary Lineker [£1.75million] or Zoe Ball [£370,000] but that’s not just what the licence fee is paying for.
“It’s paying for this overall thing. It’s not like I want to dob people in it but you read that list and go, really? Me and Gary are top of the tree?”
Speaking after kicking off the 12th run of his hit Friday night BBC1 show, he admitted his pay packet is unjustifiable. He said: “It’s made me far more wealthy than I ever thought I’d be or planned to be. All the people who say, ‘he earns that, he doesn’t deserve that’, they’re absolutely right. You cannot justify my wages, so I don’t try.”
Norton adds: “I should be an abject failure, in that I have no skills and I had no career plan. Yet I stuck with this hopeless endeavour and, somehow, it came right.”
And he worries about the BBC. “People will look back at a golden age of the BBC and think that was an amazing thing we had and remarkably good value.”
