Jeremy Vine has agreed a settlement with a Twitter user who falsely identified him as the BBC presenter at the centre of claims he paid a young person thousand of pounds for explicit photographs.
Vine, who hosts an afternoon programme on BBC Radio 2, was one of several BBC presenters, including Gary Lineker, Rylan Clark and Nicky Campbell, who were moved to publicly deny claims on social media that they were the unnamed TV star. On Wednesday, it was revealed that the presenter was the News at Ten anchor Huw Edwards.
Vine said he received an apology from a Twitter user who had “libelled” him by wrongly claiming he was the BBC presenter in question. He said the user had agreed to make a donation to charity at his request.
“He has now acknowledged that he was wrong and has apologised. At my request, he has also agreed to pay £1,000 to [the Motor Neurone Disease Association] rather than paying damages,” Vine said.
Before Edwards was named by his wife, Vicky Flind, as the BBC presenter facing allegations over payments for sexually explicit images, Vine appealed on Twitter for the presenter to come forward.
“It’s his decision but he needs to come forward now, I think,” he said, adding: “I had a situation: I was going to see Bruce Springsteen at the weekend and my wife said: ‘Are you going to be safe there?’ That’s how serious this thing is, and she gave me a baseball cap and said: ‘You’d better wear this.’”
Similarly, Campbell spoke about his “distressing weekend” after he was falsely named. He said he had contacted police about being mentioned online in connection with the story and was having conversations with his lawyers in terms of defamation.
Flind released a statement on Wednesday that identified Edwards as the person accused by the Sun of giving £35,000 to a crack cocaine user in return for explicit images – claims that were later denied by the young person in question.
Her statement elicited substantial sympathy from colleagues, former colleagues and members of the public after it revealed that Edwards was in hospital for mental health treatment.
Edwards, who was paid £435,000 last year, faces a long and expensive battle to save his career amid further accusations of potentially inappropriate behaviour, including from BBC News colleagues.
Although the police concluded he had no criminal case to answer, an internal BBC investigation may still find he breached the terms of his contract in ways that were not illegal. The broadcaster said it was continuing its “fact-finding investigations” into allegations about the presenter.
