Clive Myrie is an example of everything that is wrong with the BBC - Kelvin MacKenzie

Myrie earns another £275K-300K annually for fronting Mastermind in which he asks a series of questions.

But his diary is not that full as it has just been revealed that he earned another £250K for hosting external events outside his BBC jobs.

He didn’t reveal his huge freelance earnings easily. He had failed to declare the 29 retrospective events entries to the corporation’s external events register and was only caught out because the Sunday Times drew attention to a handful of those events.

The BBC claimed in a statement they had taken ‘’robust action’’ against Myrie for failing to publicly declare his money. In turn Myrie apologised for the ‘’admin issue’’. That is a joke since these payments go back to 2021 and said he wouldn’t be taking any more hosting engagements for a period.

He can afford to sit and home and count his money while the viewers are not all in that position.

It’s an eye-opener for some of the people who paid him. Among them was the Local Government Association. That would be with our council tax money. How incredible.

My point is that I imagine if you are a famous newsreader you will be receiving these kind of offers all day long.

In that case why does the BBC have to pay people like Myrie at all?

Why don’t they say make your money outside the BBC from those organisations who believe that you sitting in the middle of panel adds value.

For the life of me I can see no justification for paying £315k for reading the news. The BBC management come up with some cock and bull story that they have to pay competitive money or they will lose their best people to rivals.

That might be true of a Michael McIntyre but there is no poaching going on between newsreaders. Look at BBC, ITV or Channel 4. Nobody has moved for years. So that argument is tosh.

That argument is put round by the BBC management to keep their own money up. These people forget that their pay does not come from shareholders or profits, but from an ancient system where you go to jail if you don’t pay the ‘’licence’’ fee.

Myrie, and I presume other news people, have enough time to earn £10k a pop outside their full time jobs so I suggest they hand the money direct to their BBC bosses as a contribution to their salary or are no longer allowed to take outside work.

You would have thought Myrie would be flat out in his two jobs making that kind of money but no, there was always room for another £10K. Or Myrie might consider sending the money as a charitable donation to the many women who are jailed every year for failing to pay their licence fee.

It would be a nice touch. Think we could wait until hell freezes over before that happens.