Ross 'can't wait' to leave BBC
Jonathan Ross has said he “can’t wait” to leave the BBC, it emerged tonight.
In an interview with Guardian Weekend magazine, the controversial presenter claimed the atmosphere at the corporation had changed dramatically in recent times.
He also described the media furore surrounding the scandal over phone calls made to actor Andrew Sachs as “quite entertaining”.
Ross, who presents a Friday night chat show, film review programme and Saturday morning Radio 2 music show for the BBC, is due to leave the corporation in July.
His most recent three-year contract was reported to be worth £18m, a sum neither he nor the BBC has ever confirmed.
He said: “I can’t wait to get out ... because the whole place has changed quite dramatically.
“I think it’s a shame that the people running it are always trying to second guess what the newspapers will say about them – and whatever the next government we wind up with will say about them.
“The experience of being there isn’t quite the place it was. And it’s a terrible, terrible shame.”
Ross has been one of the biggest broadcasters of his generation.
In 2008, the controversial host was suspended for three months for making a series of phone calls to actor Andrew Sachs on Russell Brand’s Radio 2 show.
Ross and Brand’s messages sparked more than 50,000 complaints – and led to Brand’s decision to quit his radio show.
He explained: “It was quite entertaining. It was weird watching people get themselves into a lather over something so intrinsically unimportant as that.
“It was just so silly. Silly people writing silly things.”
“Life can sometimes potter along in the same direction, and then something comes along over which you have no control.
“It was literally within about four days of it all kicking off that I just thought, you know what, there’s no way I can control this, there’s no way I can change this.
“So I’ve just got to not let it bother me. And it became almost like I was watching it happen to somebody else.”
