Gary Lineker tops star salaries list in BBC annual report

Gary Lineker has topped a list of the BBC's best-paid stars for a sixth year in a row, earning £1.35m in the last financial year.

The Match of the Day host's appearance on the annual salaries list comes four months after he was briefly suspended over a row about his impartiality.

BBC Radio 2's Zoe Ball was the second-highest earner, with £980,000.

As usual, the BBC's annual report does not paint the full picture of what star presenters at the BBC earn.

A huge number are not listed because the corporation does not have to make public the salaries of stars who are paid through its commercial arm BBC Studios or via independent production companies.

This year's annual report has been published against a backdrop of turmoil for the corporation.

An unnamed male presenter who works for the BBC is involved in a highly-publicised dispute over the nature of his relationship with a young person he is alleged to have paid for sexually explicit photos.

Andrew Marr exited the corporation in December 2021, and as a result he has dropped off the list entirely.

His long-running weekly politics programme was replaced by Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg in September.

She earned £305,000 from that programme and her appearances on Newscast, TV documentaries plus her work as political editor until May 2022.

The list also reflects a period of significant change for BBC Radio 2, which has seen several presenters leave the station or reduce the number of shows they present.

Steve Wright was taken off his weekday afternoon programme in September, and as such his earnings dropped by nearly £100,000.

He made £360,000 in the financial year, for his last seven months hosting the afternoon programme, as well as his continued presenting of Sunday Love Songs and other occasional programmes for the network.

Wright was replaced in the daytime schedule by Scott Mills, who halfway through the financial year moved from hosting weekday afternoons on Radio 1 to the same slot on Radio 2.

Mills earned £300,000 from the BBC last year, a drop of £100,000 from last year. This is likely to be a reflection of the Radio 2 afternoon show being cut by an hour, as well as Mills' exit from his 5 Live Saturday programme.

Vanessa Feltz left her early breakfast show on Radio 2 and her BBC Radio London morning programme in September for a new job on Talk TV, and as such she too has dropped off the star salaries list.

Her former colleague Ken Bruce left his mid-morning programme in March to join Greatest Hits Radio, but as he stayed with the BBC virtually until the end of the accounting period, his salary for last year was steady at £390,000.

He will drop off next year and his replacement Vernon Kay will almost certainly feature instead.

News personalities Emily Maitlis and Jon Sopel also left the BBC for the commercial sector at the end of the previous financial year, which means they no longer feature on the list.

But there are also new entries. Rick Edwards made £178,000 after replacing Nicky Campbell on BBC Radio 5 Live's breakfast show.

His co-host Rachel Burden's salary has gone up slightly to £195,000 - but she also guest-presented some editions of BBC Breakfast.

Today programme presenter Justin Webb earned £25,000 more than last year, taking his salary to £280,000, after he took on a new role presenting Americast.

Victoria Derbyshire has also been given a raise of £50,000, bringing her salary to £295,000, as she took on a new role presenting Newsnight.

The threshold for appearing on the salaries list is £178,000. The only Radio 1 presenter whose salary was above that was Greg James, who earned £335,000 for hosting the station's breakfast show as well as Radio 4's Rewinder.

BBC Breakfast host Sally Nugent appeared to make slightly less (between £178,000-184,999) than her co-presenter Jon Kay (£185,000-189,000), despite hosting more editions of the programme than him.

However, it is not a like-for-like comparison because Kay's salary does not constitute a full year in that role, as he only took over from Dan Walker in July, and his earnings will include work undertaken in his previous job as a news correspondent.

The salary list shows four women are in the top 10 this year, an improvement on last year's three despite the departure of Feltz.

BBC newsreader Sophie Raworth (£365,000) and 6Music and Desert Island Discs host Lauren Laverne (£390,000) are now in the top 10 highest earners, as Wright and Mills dropped out.

News anchor Huw Edwards climbed from sixth to fourth place, with his salary up by £25,000 to £435,000.

The highest new entry in the list, with £260,000, was Ros Atkins, one of the hosts of BBC Radio 4's The Media Show as well as the corporation's analysis editor.

The salaries list is nowhere near a complete picture of what top talent at the BBC earn, as so many stars are paid through production companies, including the BBC's own commercial arm BBC Studios.

The government previously agreed that BBC Studios did not have to disclose talent pay so it could be treated on a level playing field with the rest of the commercial sector.

The absence of commercial salaries means household names such as Michael McIntyre, Tess Daly, Paddy McGuinness, Alex Jones, Jools Holland and the Strictly judges are absent from the list.

Quiz show hosts Richard Osman, Sandi Toksvig, Victoria Coren-Mitchell, Romesh Ranganathan and Alexander Armstrong are also not named.

Similarly, the casts of some of the corporation's biggest dramas such as EastEnders, Happy Valley, Peaky Blinders, Casualty, Call The Midwife and Doctor Who do not appear on the list despite many actors undoubtedly making large sums from the BBC.

Some stars do appear on the list, but only for some of their BBC commitments. For example, Evan Davis has his salary listed for presenting BBC Radio 4's PM programme, but not for hosting Dragons' Den.

Claudia Winkleman and Graham Norton, who both make huge sums of money from hosting BBC programmes and have featured high up the list in previous years, are also both now absent because of the way they are paid.

The BBC's overall pay for top talent was higher than the last two financial years, but lower than those in the 2018, 2019 and 2020 annual reports.

The corporation's income from the licence fee was down from £3.8bn to £3.74bn, which the BBC said was due to flat licence fee pricing and a decline in paid-for TV licences.