Thompson supports calls to reveal BBC star pay

BBC Director General Mark Thompson has given his support for publishing BBC stars' earnings "in pay bands". Speaking on Sunday's Andrew Marr Show on BBC1 the corporation chief backed calls made by the BBC Trust earlier in the week for salaries to be revealed, but added that disclosing individual star pay packets would be "wrong". "We absolutely accept the idea of publishing in bands," Thompson said. "The BBC is trying to find the right balance between the public's absolute right to have a sense of what the BBC spends on on-air talent, and a broadcasting industry where confidentiality is the absolute norm, is the expectation and in some cases the contractual right of the individuals involved." I continue to believe that it would be wrong and it would be damaging and destructive to the BBC and its ability to get the top stars to actually publish individual salaries," he added. "We're in competition with other broadcasters in an industry where no other broadcaster publishes this sort of information." The BBC has come in for criticism recently for the salaries paid to some of its biggest names, including Jonathan Ross and Graham Norton.

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Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix.

An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.