BBC's Alan Yentob admits he is paid a 'huge amount'

Mr Yentob said that he and other presenters such as Graham Norton and Gary Lineker are paid "huge amounts of money" compared to ordinary workers.

However, he claimed that they could earn significantly more if they worked for private sector broadcasters.

Mr Yentob was speaking at the Radio Academy Radio Festival in Salford, Manchester, where an angry member of the audience criticised presenter's pay.

One audience member, who described himself as an "ordinary licence fee payer", criticised the remuneration of BBC presenters.

He said: "A lot of stars are paid huge amounts of money, and yet you've got Joe public earning Ј25,000-a-year which to a lot of these people is nothing.mpre.....

"I have to work 35 years to earn what Wayne Rooney earns in a week. You've got the likes of Graham Norton, Gary Lineker. He's on a good little earner there [advertising crisps], he'll be on a good little earner at Match of the Day as well."

Mr Yentob replied: "I agree with you about what Wayne Rooney earns, I agree with you about what presenters of all kinds earn including Richard [Bacon, the BBC Radio 5 Live presenter], I and others. However, the truth is that the BBC does pay significantly less [than commercial broadcasters]."

He said that the public appearance of Lord Patten and Mark Thompson, the former director general, at the public accounts committee earlier this year had been "unseemly".

He said: "I would say that the BBC should have been able to have these arguments privately rather than in public."

The corporation has been heavily criticised by politicians of all parties for its "telephone number salaries" for both presenters and senior managers.

Lord Patten, the chairman of the BBC Trust, admitted earlier this year that too many senior managers are on high salaries and generous pensions.

He said that there were still too many managers at the corporation, who had been paid "too much" to preside over "processes and relationships of labyrinthine and often unnecessary complexity".

More than a dozen of the BBC's biggest television and radio stars are paid more than Ј500,000 despite corporation attempts to cut costs.

The BBC's accounts show that corporation spent Ј200million on paying presenters and "talent" last year.

The figures include a total of 14 individuals were paid between Ј500,000 and Ј5million, although the BBC refused to provide narrower cost bands or publish details on who they were.

Separate figures on senior manager pay show that the corporation has axed just two members of staff earning more than Ј100,000 in the past year.

Despite a drive to cut the number of managers on "telephone number salaries", the number of senior managers at the corporation earning six-figure salaries has fallen from 248 to just 245.

Mr Yentob also said that the Jimmy Savile scandal might have been avoided if Mark Byford, the former deputy director general who left the corporation with a Ј1 million pay-off, has still been in post.

A subsequent investigation by Nick Pollard, the former head of Sky News, found that there was a "virtual meltdown" at the corporation and that the then head of news Helen Boaden failed to take a "proactive" role.

Mr Yentob said: "There is an argument that what happened with Savile may not have happened if [Byford] had been there. Do I think things might have gone differently? Yes I do actually. We didn't have the curiosity to investigate it thoroughly and properly at the time and ITV ended out making the [Savile] programme and that was deeply embarrassing for the BBC." telegraph