Jonathan Creek star faces 25% pay cut by BBC

It emerged that any entertainers earning more than £100,000 a year faced a pay cut of 25% when their contracts are renegotiated, and for the highly-paid stars the salary reduction could be as much as 40%.

Now Davies, who like his QI co-star Stephen Fry is an avid Twitter user, has raised his concerns about the talent cuts. During a Twitter chat, Davies wrote: “Just had a 25% pay cut on Jonathan Creek. The BBC are driving down talent costs.”

He later explained the show’s design budget had been cut by “more than half” adding: “Yes, it does worry me.”

He said he was annoyed by the reduction in his pay but was concerned about the impact on programme quality. “Absolutely it will effect the show ... I’m all for driving down exec costs,” he added.

Davies is due to start filming this month for a 90-minute special, The Judas Tree, which is set to be broadcast at Easter next year.

The series, which originally ran from 1997 to 2004, returned for a one-off special, The Grinning Man, which drew 9 million viewers on New Year’s Day this year.

A BBC spokesman said the corporation did not comment on individual salaries but denied the show’s budget had been cut by as much as Davies claimed. “It’s absolutely not true the design budget has been cut by more than half,” the spokesman said.

“We are making efficiencies on this show just as on many others but it is not to the level that has been suggested,” he added.

News of the cuts to star talent were broken by Mark Thompson, the corporation’s director-general, in a meeting to which about 100 of the BBC’s best-known television, news and radio stars were invited. Presenter Jonathan Ross, 48, who is on £5.6m a year was expected to be among those to be hit with the maximum cut.

Around 40 BBC television and radio stars are reportedly earning more than £1m a year including Graham Norton, the 46-year-old camp comic and presenter whose £2.5m-a-year deal comes up for renewal at the end of this year and has already said he is prepared to take a pay cut.

The Irishman’s last show, Totally Saturday, was a ratings flop and the presenter is said to have hated it.

But earlier this week it emerged he may quit the BBC and was in talks with Channel 4 to take over Paul O’Grady’s daytime talk show. O’Grady is understood to be threatening to quit Channel 4 in a row over budget cuts.

Last month Jana Bennett, head of the BBC’s television channels said the broadcaster would not disclose the salaries of its top stars because the public would not understand why they are so high.

Speaking at the Edinburgh International Television Festival, Ms Bennett, director of BBC Vision, said that BBC staff deserved to be treated differently from workers in other areas of the public sector. But Shadow Culture Secretary Ed Vaizey has outlined plans to compel the BBC to publish details of its stars’ salaries.

The BBC has cut 7200 jobs over the past four-and-a-half years, with another 1200 to go, and is making efficiency savings of £1.9bn by 2013.

Meanwhile broadcasting veteran Wogan has risked the wrath of newsreaders after describing their craft as “the easiest job in the media”.

The BBC Radio 2 breakfast show host laid into huffy “self important” presenters whose job, he says, is “a piece of cake”. Wogan, who has an audience of nearly 8 million for his radio show, blasted the profession in his forthcoming book Where Was I? The World According To Terry Wogan.

In the book, to be published on September 9, the 71-year-old star referred to an incident in which a journalist stormed out of a studio because he did not want to be in the same newsroom as his co-presenter.

He speculated that the journalist had a fit of pique because his co-host was associated with make-over shows rather than hard news.

Alan Davies