What level of depravity must a top BBC star sink to in order to get sacked? Clearly, in the case of Huw Edwards, being arrested for possessing the most serious category of sexual images involving children was not enough.
When the police informed BBC director-general Tim Davie of the presenter’s arrest last November on suspicion of child sex offences, the corporation kept Edwards on full pay. In fact, Edwards received a £40,000 pay rise in the last financial year, despite being off-air for most of it. Davie has defended the generous increase by insisting the pay rise was dated from before any allegations.
The director general has subsequently said the BBC was “very shocked” when it learned the specific nature of the charges, some including making images of children as young as seven, to which Edwards pleaded guilty in court on Wednesday.
Davie admitted that police informed the corporation that Edwards was suspected of possessing category A images, but he said it was not told the ages of the victims in the photographs.
Is the suggestion that had the children involved been older, then continuing to turn a blind eye to the proclivities of their prize employee would be justified?
Last summer, when the story first broke about Edwards paying a 17-year-old boy £35,000 for sexually explicit images – not related to the court case – there was, among some of his friends and former colleagues, a degree of sympathy.
In fact, a few, including fellow Garrick Club member Jon Sopel, were outraged that the scurrilous Sun had dared to intrude on Edwards’ private life.
Wishing Huw well, Sopel tweeted: “There was no criminality, but perhaps a complicated private life. That doesn’t feel very private now. I hope that will give some [The Sun] cause to reflect. They really need to.”
Sopel’s News Agents podcast with Emily Maitlis went further, with her challenging the tabloid’s focus on the “so-called child” – that would be the teenager involved with Edwards, 62, – and asking “is there a way back to the BBC” for the disgraced newsman.
With hindsight, those who defended Edwards when they thought he was only pursuing teenage boys may come to regret their priorities, putting compassion for the rich and powerful BBC anchor above concern for a vulnerable anonymous youngster.
Last July, presumably this was seen as a one-off indiscretion and Edwards was admitted to a clinic, suffering from “serious mental health issues” which meant he escaped closer scrutiny.
But it was emerging even then that his behaviour, while not thought to be criminal, was certainly questionable, as another BBC employee and former staffer came forward with complaints of receiving “inappropriate messages” from Edwards.
These triggered an internal BBC investigation, which was criticised for being both slow and secretive, in keeping with the management’s coyness in confronting the facts about its star.
In May last year, when the family of the 17-year-old who Edwards was paying first approached the BBC, there was a phone call but little else until the Sun exposed the details.
Now, the BBC is accused of sweeping the conclusions of its own investigation under the carpet. Whistleblowers who raised concerns about Edwards’ behaviour said they had been given no information about what had happened to their evidence and called for the findings to be published.
The Telegraph reported that one BBC insider said they told the BBC’s internal inquiry they had received flirtatious messages from Edwards, which they found inappropriate, and had never “heard anything of substance about how the investigation went”.
Another whistleblower, a junior producer at the time, has since revealed that Edwards had been “pushy”, inviting him to share a hotel room in Windsor on the eve of Prince Philip’s funeral.
And today, The Sun has published more allegations of Edwards’ unsolicited advances to young men. Sun Editor Victoria Newton said on Talk TV the paper had evidence going back to 2018 of him harassing junior members of staff.
Is it really conceivable that this behaviour went unnoticed in the newsroom and was never brought to management’s attention?
Davie, when he finally agreed to be interviewed on the BBC’s News at Six (though not on the more testing Today programme), insisted that the corporation was “not sitting on anything that I think we need to share with the police, or is of a serious nature that would make me feel that we hadn’t followed up properly”.
Given the poor judgement of BBC managers to date, this unconvincing self-appraisal is unlikely to go down well with the licence fee-paying public.
Certainly, many of the BBC’s journalists are not satisfied with Davie’s prevarications. Jeremy Vine asked on his show on Channel 5 yesterday whether the BBC had quizzed Edwards about his guilt in November last year following his arrest, before allowing him to remain on full pay.
Vine, who also hosts a show on BBC Radio 2, said: “If he said to them, ‘It’s for these serious offences, but I’m not guilty,’ then I would think you could start to take action to get the money back. Because that clearly is a lie. He’s admitted he’s guilty.”
Nicholas Witchell, meanwhile, who was on air with Edwards covering the Queen’s death in September 2022, said his former colleague had behaved in an “utterly deplorable” manner and should have quit as soon as he was arrested as he would have known “the game was up”.
Davie and his executives must know the game is up for them too. Their handling of the Edwards scandal has backfired and with the prospect of more revelations to come – there have been reports of burner phones and wiped hard drives – they must now see that full disclosure is the only option.
The spectre of Jimmy Savile and other notorious BBC celebrities still looms large over the broadcaster and it is difficult to understand why the current management has learnt nothing from its past.
Heads must roll if trust is to be restored and the corporation’s reputation rescued. And top of the list is Davie himself, who has badly mishandled this latest episode of BBC shame.
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