my heart bleeds
Poor Chris Moyles. Whilst no-one could condone the non-payment of his salary for eight weeks you have to question the scale and magnitude of said salary. He is one of the BBC’s highest-paid performers, with a salary touching £500,000 a year, approximately £42,000 per month. So, eighty grand down he whines and moans on-air and calls it a ‘massive eff you to me’.
Why did it take him eight weeks? I suspect because he just didn’t notice it wasn’t there. The rest of us would have noticed our salaries not being paid within eight hours, and would have done something about it, pronto. Poor Chris Moyles plots and connives to get the sympathy vote as opposed to merely enquiring of its whereabouts through the correct channels of, I guess, his boss and HR. It reminds me a little of the kind offer made by BA Chief, Willie Walsh, a couple of years ago where every employee, himself included, should give up a month’s salary, claiming that a month’s of his salary means the same as a month’s of a baggage handler. Get real.
As live on-air meltdowns go, DJs (disc jockeys, people who play records I ask you!) do appear to have previous: the ‘tired and emotional’ Tommy Woodfooffe in 1937 losing sight of the entire British fleet and shouting ‘It’s gone! There’s nothing between us and heaven. Nothing at all!’; Tony Blackburn tearfully playing ‘If You Leave Me Now’ over and over after his marriage broke up; and who could have forgotten DLT gravely resigning live on air due to changes that ‘go against my principles’. Oh, those changes that would have also made you redundant you mean, Dave! No more snooker on the radio for you, Dave. And us, thankfully.
But should anyone really have been surprised by Moyles’ rant? For a guy who routinely uses the term gay in a derogative manner, describes Poles as being good ironers and prostitutes, calling certain female listeners ‘dirty whores’ and offering Charlotte Church upon her 16th birthday ‘to lead her through the forest of her sexuality’ is there anything new in his adolescent outburst?
And his answer to the furore that followed? Moyles went on to explain that he was ‘not a great morning person’. No sh*t Sherlock, anyone tuning in to your show could have told you that.
