Wrong, John

 As an ex-BBC employee myself, it's dodgy picking at John Humphrys' approach to retirement income. 

In his latest Mail column, Mr Humphrys travels swiftly from not telling us what he actually said at a lunch with Huw Edwards 18 years ago, to contemplating a core BBC producing news and current affairs only, funded from general taxation at £11 per head. 

Mr Humphrys presumably now lacks a dedicated research team. He quotes a figure of £348m a year to fund News & Current Affairs; that narrow figure was down to £310m in 2021. He misses quite a few other costs - how about £302m for the World Service ?  Then there are the means by which news is supported and delivered.  A Radio 4 with just The Today programme, World At One etc and bulletins would still require transmitters etc, as would Radio 5Live, The Asian Network, Radio Scotland, Radio Wales, Radio Cymru, BBC Local Radio etc. Radio 2 still delivers the biggest audio news and current affairs audience, for its morning bulletins. The country's most popular tv news and current affairs show, by combination, runs around the nations and regions at 6.30pm weeknights, and demands an infrastructure way outside the core £310m. Then there are the myriad software engineers constantly tweaking the BBC News app. I could go on... 

Outside that core, would a BBC funded by subscription ever have made such telling programmes as "Wales at War, with John Humphrys", "Humphrys in Search of God", "John Humphrys: My Kind of Jazz", "On The Ropes", "You Decide", "Heart and Soul", "28 Acts in 28 Minutes" and so many more ?

It's entertaining to think that a cello-playing lover of classical music, which Mr Humphrys champions for money on Classic FM (he's covering breakfast this week), is happy to leave the BBC's serious music output to the risks of subscription and advertising.