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Louise Thomas
Editor
Clive Myrie has apologised to the BBC after the presenter failed to declare extra earnings as required.
The 60-year-old earns a reported £310,000 from his role as a broadcaster at the corporation, as well as an undisclosed amount from his work presenting quiz show Mastermind. Myrie is best known for his role as news anchor on BBC’s News at One, News at Six, and News at Ten.
He is said to have earned an extra £65,000 from corporate events, however, which are supposed to be declared to his employer on a monthly basis. A Sunday Times investigation found that 11 of those events were not shared with the BBC.
Monthly disclosures by staff are shared with the public every three months after the corporation’s director-general, Tim Davie, ushered in new rules for the purpose of transparency in 2021.
Myrie’s biggest undeclared event was a speaking role at a Views From the Top dinner, hosted by Dutch investment bank ING, at the Gherkin in London, for which he is said to have earned in excess of £10,000, according to The Times.
Other commitments included various speaking engagements for which he charged between £5,000 and £10,000. These include a conference for the National Residential Landlords Association last October, a dinner for Suffolk chamber of commerce in September last year, and the annual conference for the Coventry and Warwickshire chamber of commerce in November 2023.
He was also paid an additional £5,000 to £10,000 for attending an event for Anthology Together, an education technology company.
A spokesperson for the BBC has said: “We have spoken to Clive to remind him of his responsibilities with regards to the external events register and he has apologised for these errors.”
They added that the BBC’s register of external earnings would be “updated at the next quarterly publication to include all relevant events that were previously omitted”.
The BBC, which is funded by British taxpayers, was also embroiled in controversy earlier this year after it was forced to answer for how it would reclaim £479,000 worth of pay from Huw Edwards after he pled guilty to making indecent images.
