Twitter erupts after ‘Charlie from Casualty’ is BBC’s highest paid soap star
Eyebrows raised at £270K pay gap between man pretending to be a nurse and over-worked real-life one
IN a first for the NHS, a nurse has been paid £100,000 more than a doctor - that is if they work on the A&E ward of Holby City Hospital.
For today's bombshell BBC pay report has revealed that Casualty star Derek Thompson - aka Charlie - is the highest paid actor, earning up to £399,000.
In reality a senior charge nurse earns on average about £30,000.
Meanwhile Doctor Who actor Peter Capaldi took home up to £249,999.
The pay gap has spurred Internet wags to point out that nurse Charlie Fairweather's pay must be straining the cash-strapped NHS’ budget.
Jon Rotten tweeted: “Actor who plays Charlie from Casualty gets 20 times what a nurse earns for pretending to be a nurse!!”
While Mark Russell pondered: “No wonder the NHS is in financial strife when Charlie Fairhead gets paid £350,000 per year as Emergency Nurse Practitioner.”
It comes as the BBC has revealed its top talent pay - with DJ Chris Evans topping the list with more than £2 million and dwarfing the pay packet of the corporation's top-earning woman Claudia Winkleman.
Only one third of the list of talent earning over £150,000 are women, with the top names being men. Details of stars' pay were revealed in £50,000 bands.
The top 10 includes just two women, Strictly Come Dancing and Radio 2 host Winkleman (£450,000-£499,999) and The One Show presenter Alex Jones (£400,000-£449,999).
Radio 2 Breakfast DJ and former Top Gear host Evans took home between £2.2 million and £2,249,999 in the 12 months to April 2017.
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A year ago, the star admitted he was overpaid, saying: "It's not exactly breaking news that people who do what I do for a living ... get paid too much money ...
"We've got a job that people would kill for ... most of us work part time. Just pay us less, that's what I would do, it's not rocket science."
Speaking at a press conference to launch the annual report, BBC Director-General Lord Hall defended the former Top Gear host's pay.
"Chris Evans is presenting the most popular show on the most popular radio network in Europe," Lord Hall said.
"We do know that, for a number of presenters, they have been made offers by commercial radio.
"We've lost people.... to Amazon and to other big players ... Also, the choice for some of our talent is to go and do something completely different because they're entertainers ... that is the market we're dealing with."
Responding to the criticism, a BBC spokesman told The Sun Online: "The Government has said we only need to disclose payments made to individuals directly by the licence fee.
"Some well-known names on the BBC are on programmes made by independent production companies. We pay a fee to the company for the delivery of the programmes.
"The decision on what to pay the talent and the contractual obligations rests with the independent producers rather than the BBC."
There could be embarrassment for the presenters of flagship Radio 4 programme Today.
John Humphrys earns between £600,000 and £649,000 for the morning news programme and other work, including Mastermind.
Nick Robinson is on £250,000 to £299,000, ahead of female presenter Mishal Husain (£200,000 to £249,000), who also presents TV news for the corporation, but their colleague Sarah Montague does not make the £150,000 pay bracket.
Lord Hall suggested that other programmes worked on by some Today presenters had skewed the figures, saying that the lowest paid Today host was not a woman.
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