TALK about getting out of there in the nick of time . . .

The BBC was forced this week to reveal how much it pays its top stars, and everyone’s been running around making “it’s not fair” noises ever since.

9 Chris Evans can’t go anywhere without being photographed. He can’t go out for dinner with his wife without someone interrupting every two minutes for a bloody selfie Credit: Rex Features

9 #notonthelist Emily Maitlis Credit: Getty Images - WireImage

Well I think it’s disgusting. I’m no more interested in how much Huw Edwards earns than I am in the size of his penis. Or whether his is bigger than Graham Norton’s.

Maybe that’s what’s coming next. All BBC employees with a todger bigger than six inches must declare it.

That’d really get the women going. “We don’t have penises at all,” Emily Maitlis will wail.

For now though, it’s money, and Chris Evans seems to be coming in for the most stick since it’s emerged that of all the people who are paid directly by the BBC, and not through their own production companies, he is trousering the most.

“How on earth can someone get paid £2.25million a year for just talking?” said everyone on every vox pop on every news bulletin.

The BBC tried to argue that if it didn’t pay its stars millions of pounds, they’d simply get a job somewhere else. That’s nonsense.

Maybe that’s what’s coming next. All BBC employees with a todger bigger than six inches must declare it.

9 Graham declares...

Because where else would Chris be able to earn that much for hosting a breakfast show on the wireless? Jack FM? Radio Coventry? I don’t think so.

No. He’s paid that much because the Beeb’s “lead diversity controller for ethnicity” and the “head of inward sustainability” — who also wouldn’t be able to get jobs anywhere else — had a meeting and decided he’s worth the same as 100 nurses.

It’s hard to justify that but I’m going to give it a bash anyway.

First of all, Chris has to get up in the middle of the night to host his breakfast show. He can never be late. He can never be ill. He can never be in a bad mood. He must park his home life issues and his hangovers at the door.

9 Huw declares... Credit: pixel 8000

Then he had that whole Top Gear thing. When it all went t*ts up, the paps didn’t camp outside the commissioning editor’s house or the channel controller’s. They camped outside his.

He and he alone took the flak.

Which adds to the problems that beset every famous face. He can’t go anywhere without being photographed. He can’t go out for dinner with his wife without someone interrupting every two minutes for a bloody selfie.

9 Are you sure, Gary? Credit: @garylineker : Instagram

If he stops to take a leak at the side of the motorway, we are going to read about it the next day.

If he doesn’t shake himself properly and emerges with a coin of shame on his trousers, we’ll be invited to laugh at him.

And if he pops into a boozer for a swift one, a long lens is going to make him look sad and drunk and friendless.

He is a public figure and he is never allowed to forget that.

So he’s not being paid to talk and play records for a couple of hours in a morning. He’s being paid to hand over his whole life.

It’s the same story with Gary Lineker and Graham Norton and John Humphrys.

You may say that you’d be prepared to do that for a couple of million every year. And I don’t blame you.

But I bet that after you’d spent a little while as a prisoner in your own house, you’d think differently. And bugger off to Amazon.

Would he earn more there? Aha. That’s the beauty of it. I don’t have to tell you.

A SHOWROOM that only sells electric cars has just opened in Milton Keynes, Bucks.

And sales staff — known as gurus — have been told to give customers the honest truth about the pitfalls of buying a car you need to plug in at night.

Good job they don’t employ me. Or they wouldn’t sell one.

9 So, let's talk about the birds and the bees... Credit: AP:Associated Press

NEWS that the cull of badgers in certain parts of the country will be extended has not gone down well with animal enthusiasts.

A leading Brian May fan said this week that the badger population could be reduced to a number where they can’t repopulate.

Er. So let’s see.

That would be one.

A brand spankin' delivery

A FEW years after a hapless bank employee was castigated in the papers for leaving everyone’s bank account numbers on a train, I published my own bank details in The Sun, saying that all anyone could do with the information was pay money IN to my account.

9 Why spend the ill-gotten gains on a private jet or holiday, when you can send Jeremy some 'sex' handcuffs Credit: Alamy

It turned out I was wrong and a charity set up a direct debit, helping itself to 500 of my pounds.

That was the first time I was hacked and now it’s happened again.

Someone very weird has accessed my credit card and is using it – you won’t believe this, my PA certainly doesn’t – to send me fetish gear.

They could use it to buy themselves some petrol, or a private plane, but no.

All they do, every week, is send me another roll of bondage tape, some handcuffs and a couple of whips.

YEAH, RIGHT A RECORD number of pupils were expelled last year for taking drugs and having inappropriate sex with one another. And yet, youth workers say that the number of young people taking drugs is falling. And falling fast. They say the number of 16 to 24-year-olds who say they have used drugs in the previous 12 months fell from 30 per cent in 1996 to 18 per cent in 2016. Yeah right. And the number of 16 to 24-year-olds who lie when questioned about what they’ve been smoking has risen by exactly the same amount.

I'd pay to hunt hunters

AFTER that idiotic American dentist shot Cecil the lion, there was such a global backlash that I thought big game hunting would stop.

But no.

9 It now turns out that another moron has shot Cecil’s son Credit: AP:Associated Press

Because it now turns out that another moron has shot Cecil’s son.

It’s hard to know what can be done to halt this madness.

But how about we issue licences to hunt the hunters?

I’d pay quite a lot to visit the homes of these w***ers, armed with nothing but a baseball bat and a nail gun.

WE read often these days about two-man teams who roam our city streets on mopeds, mugging anyone who looks like they might have a watch.

Many use machetes and knives and it all sounds very scary.

But it could be worse.

We could be living in South Africa. There’s a trend there for witch doctors to tear out your eyes, which they then sell as medicine.



I love cricket... with a nice sauce

AFTER analysing the buying trends of its gigantic customer base, Amazon has announced that soon we will be eating a lot of insects.

9 Credit: Getty Images

They say that we will also be filming in 3D virtual reality and moving about in driverless cars and so on. But the one that stuck out for me was this beetle business.

It makes sense.

Soon, we won’t have enough space left to rear cows and sheep and pigs, and obviously vegetarianism isn’t an option unless you’re mad. Insects, therefore, are a very good idea.

They are a good source of protein and, having tried a fried grasshopper in Burma once, I can report they are tasty as well.

Cheap too.

AN American whistle-blower has sparked fury by saying that airport security staff are forced by their managers to target people who look like they may be terrorists.

Er. What’s wrong with that?