

Veteran BBC radio presenter Paul Gambaccini has launched an outspoken attack on the corporation, calling it the “worst employer of all time”.



Gambaccini, last week revealed as the new presenter of Radio 2’s Pick of the Pops, claimed director general Tony Hall had failed to back his stars and caved in to a media “witch-hunt” following the Jimmy Savile scandal.



The presenter said Hall and his “coterie” valued high culture above popular programmes and were responsible for driving a rift between management and talent.

Gambaccini took aim at its treatment of Tony Blackburn who was sacked in the wake of the Dame Janet Smith inquiry into sexual abuse at the corporation, saying it was “beyond travesty”.

He said people who worked on Radio 2, the country’s biggest radio station with more than 15 million listeners, were united in their support of Blackburn and “the wrong Tony was sacked”.

Gambaccini also criticised the BBC’s controversial coverage of the police raid on the home of Sir Cliff Richard, which he described as a “new low”.

“The chasm between talent and management has never been as wide or deep as it is under the current management coterie,” told the Radio Today podcast, presented by former BBC radio executive, Trevor Dann.

“We know the current management team don’t care about us. Another of the great chasms that has opened up is high culture versus populism. You have Tony ‘Royal Opera House’ Hall versus Tony ‘Top 40’ Blackburn.

“We at Radio 2 know the current management of the BBC dismiss us. Our generation of presenters know we are expendable for the reputation of the current management coterie because they want to blame somebody and say it was all them.”

Gambaccini returned to Radio 2 18 months ago following a year away from broadcasting following his arrest for alleged historic sex crimes. Arrested as part of the high profile investigation Operation Yewtree, he was subsequently told he would face no action.

Blackburn, the former host of Pick of the Pops, was sacked by the BBC in February after Hall said his evidence to the Dame Janet Smith inquiry “fell short” of the standards demanded.

Blackburn, who is still employed by commercial radio, accused the BBC of making him a “scapegoat” with the matter still understood to be in the hands of his lawyers.

Gambaccini said: “I have never known a network to be as united as Radio 2 in support of Tony Blackburn. You will hear the expression ‘the wrong Tony has been sacked’ and that is the unanimous feeling with the possible exception of the controller [Bob Shennan] whom I have not spoken to.”

The presenter said there had never been an explanation to station staff why Blackburn had been sacked.

“We had the director general go to the Dame Janet news conference where he explained in his own inimitable way, kowtowing as he did before the witch-hunters of the press,” Gambaccini said.

“Like many bad generals, Tony Hall fought the last war. The last war was Savile, the BBC lost that war. The new war was an attempt to discredit the BBC through the persecution of its veteran presenters. He did not defend us.”

Gambaccini said during his year away from broadcasting no one from the BBC’s senior management “above radio level spoke to me. Nobody said ‘Are you all right?’ I do think that does qualify the BBC for the worst employer of all time award. Nobody from upper management wanted to know.”

The presenter compared the BBC’s coverage of the raid on Cliff Richard’s house to “the role of Pravda in the Soviet Union, acting as a recruiting agency for the police”.

He said he did not give evidence to the Smith inquiry because he was told by one of the inquiry’s assistants that its findings would be handed to the police.

“I said in that case, no. I cannot imagine a more perfect example of McCarthyism, rat on your colleagues and information will be given to the police,” he said.

He said Blackburn’s sacking was an “invite to bandwagoners, to put him in a realm in which he does not belong. You are jeopardising a man’s sanity and his legal standing.”

Gambaccini said it had been made clear to him that it was “not a Radio 2 decision. It is the director general’s decision with the controller as the hit man. Everybody else at Radio 2 supports Tony Blackburn. It is unanimous.”



A BBC source said: “We have a lot of time and respect for Paul but we think he’s completely wrong in his personal assessment of the management of the BBC and as the public know, we are currently on a creative high with fantastic programming on both radio and TV.”

It is not the first time Gambaccini has stood up to criticise BBC management. Back in 2008 he criticised former Radio 2 controller Lesley Douglas over the “Sachsgate” affair involving Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand.

The BBC declined to comment.