Chris Moyles leaving BBC Radio One after his last Breakfast Show

Chris Moyles, the former BBC presenter, pretended to be a used-car salesman for a year in a failed attempt to avoid tax on £1 million.

Mr Moyles entered an aggressive tax avoidance scheme called Working Wheels, which required him tell HM Revenue & Customs that he had spent the 2007/8 tax year “engaged in self-employment as a used car trader”.

The self-styled “saviour of Radio 1” claimed on his tax return that he had sold £3,800 worth of second-hand cars.

But he also claimed to have run up losses of £1million, which he then tried to use to avoid tax on £1million of other income, primarily consisting of his estimated £700,000-a-year taxpayer-funded salary from the BBC.

In a damning judgment, a tax tribunal judge struck