KAYE Adams is set to sue the BBC after she was taken off air due to “bullying” allegations, according to reports.
Adams was axed from her £155,000-a-year hosting job on a BBC Scotland morning radio show in February after she was accused of shouting and swearing at colleagues.
The presenter has denied any wrongdoing and suggested her “assertiveness” in the workplace had been mistaken for bullying.
The 63-year-old is now reportedly looking at legal action after she was left “bewildered” that another BBC host kept their job despite having similar claims brought against them.
Victoria Derbyshire was subjected to an investigation by the BBC over her behaviour after multiple complaints were received by the broadcaster. However, the complaints were not upheld.
Adams has instructed lawyers to sue the BBC and central to their case will be the Derbyshire incident, according to the Scottish Mail on Sunday.
A source told the paper: “Kaye was freelance, Victoria is staff. That seems very unfair. It’s like there is one rule for one, another rule for another. It isn’t right.
“Kaye has a got herself a lawyer who is looking at everything and she is poised to take the legal action. She is looking at the options."
Adams, the source said, faced a "difficult work environment".
They added: “Producers were out of their depth and the bosses brought in many inexperienced people, with little training, and threw them in at the deep end. The BBC like to describe their presenters as powerful but many felt the opposite.
“Presenters weren’t getting the support they needed, leaving them feeling out of control on the airwaves.
“The BBC doesn’t want to be accountable for the poor work environment it created.”
Complaints against the long-standing broadcaster include the accusation of an “abhorrent swear word” at a colleague, while in another incident Adams is alleged to have thrown a pen at a producer in frustration.
It was also claimed that Adams berated an intern over their ability to do their job.
It was reported that Radio Scotland’s head of audio and events, Victoria Easton Riley, had become concerned by Adams’s conduct during a routine meeting attended by BBC Scotland’s staff at the broadcaster’s Pacific Quay headquarters in Glasgow last year.
“After witnessing Kaye’s behaviour first hand, Victoria started talking to other members of staff who worked on her programme,” one insider told The Times.
“The floodgates then broke and she was suspended. This was never about one single incident. The investigation looked at her behaviour over many years.”
Adams, who also presents Loose Women on ITV, hosted Mornings With Kaye Adams up until last year.
She previously hosted the daily phone-in programme Call Kaye between 2010 and 2015, before fronting The Kaye Adams Show.
Adams has previously denied the claims against her, saying she had been “blindsided” by the allegations.
“I am not the person that I was painted as,” she said.
