Thursday 23 September 2010

My diamond shoes don't fit and my fifties won't fit in my wallet...

I didn't hear it, of course, because I don't listen to music radio, but the furore over Chris Moyles' rant has meant it's not difficult to know what's gone on and what he said live on air yesterday. Apparently Mr Moyles hasn't been paid for a couple of months due to some kind of administrative error. Now if this happened to most of us, we'd: 1) Fret about the mortgage and 2) Take it up with HR.

My Moyles, however, has the advantage of being able to air his grievances, quite literally, to millions of people. It's his show, he can say what he likes within the law and his contractual obligations, of course. But did he really think this was particularly politic? Especially as he then blasted a listener who had the temerity to point out that on what he earned he'd probably cope with a few weeks without pay. "You know nothing about my life," he said in response to said texter. Well, Chris, actually as you're BBC 'talent', we know something about your life. We know you earn £500,000 per year. Which comes from the licence payers.

The ONS website has the mean gross annual income for a man in the UK in 2009 as a little over £26,000. To put that another way, Mr Average Joe Public would have to work for a little over 19 years to earn what Mr Moyles does in 12 months. Now I'm not suggesting that he should just put up with not being paid, the contract he signed obligates the Beeb to pay him just as any other employer, but I do think he should think a bit more carefully before he uses the medium which enables him to earn so handsomely to bitch about it so loudly, especially when he's doing so at the very people who pay for it.

2 comments:

  1. Actually I thought it was quite an entertaining piece of radio. He's never meek or modest, that's for sure... but I always have thought he's really engaging and (a strange concept for people who have never listened to him), he's actually quite self-effacing. He's not like Chris Evans circa 1996, for example, who was actually quite nasty on occasion.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I saw him at a book signing in a Waterstones once. I've rarely been tempted to give a stranger a slap, but I thought about it for a moment that day. By the way, it wasn't me who took the idea a step further with Leona Lewis a couple of years later. Honestly!

    ReplyDelete