Worthy

Good heavens. Former boss of BBC News James Harding is believed to have halved the salary of the world's greatest foreign correspondent, John Simpson, down to £150k, on his arrival at the BBC in 2013 - and was planning to cut it in half again, just as Mr Harding decided to leave,

Mr Simpson tells the The Mail on Sunday: ‘The previous head of BBC news seemed to see no role for me and proposed to cut my pay by nearly three-quarters in an effort to get rid of me. For almost a year I scarcely appeared on the Ten O’Clock News.

‘He apparently also wanted to get rid of various other familiar faces from BBC news and current affairs.

‘But at the end of last year, a few days before the new deal was imposed on me, James Harding announced his resignation. I am proud just to have survived and to have kept going in spite of a fairly hefty attempt to get rid of me.’