JONATHAN Ross has saved his £6million-a-year job as a BBC presenter.
JONATHAN Ross has saved his £6million-a-year job as a BBC presenter.
The star was suspended by the Beeb after making obscene phone calls to Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs.
The BBC Trust ruled that the calls were “grossly offensive” and there was no justification for broadcasting them.
Ross and comic Russell Brand outraged licence-fee payers when they called Sachs and told him Brand had slept with his granddaughter Georgina Baillie.
Brand quit his BBC radio show after the sick prank last month.
Today the BBC governing body said the action taken against Ross and Brand was appropriate.
But Trust chairman Sir Michael Lyons said the BBC’s director general had taken the right action with regard to Ross, who was suspended without pay for three months.
He said: “We have underlined very clearly that it is not the job of the Trust to make decisions about the terms and conditions of performers or the sanctions that are applied to them when they are found to be wanting.
“We are very clear that the director general has taken the right action with respect to Jonathan Ross.”
Ross can now return to work with the BBC when his current three-month suspension without pay is up in January.
The Trust said the material broadcast on Brand’s Radio 2 show was a “deplorable intrusion” into the private lives of Mr Sachs and Miss Baillie.
There was no “editorial justification” and no “informed consent obtained” for airing the messages, which were left on the answerphone of the 78-year-old actor, the Trust said.
BBC trustee Richard Tait said there were three failures - to exercise editorial control, to follow established compliance systems and a failure of judgment in taking editorial decisions.
Miss Baillie said she was "happy" today after hearing the Trust's report into the scandal.
While Andrew Sach’s wife Melody said Ross and Brand “picked on the wrong man” for their prank.
Speaking at their family home in Kilburn, north west London, she said: "My husband is the most wonderful person you could ever meet. They just picked on the wrong man.”
Mrs Sachs said the family was “tired” of the so-called “Sachsgate” affair, but said they had “no bitterness at all” towards the BBC presenters.
“Andrew has got nothing to say,” she said.
“I don’t suppose he wants to do anything more about it. We are so tired of all this stuff. Whatever they do, they do, but we are so tired of it all.
“We are the happiest people in the world. Andy is fine and that’s all that matters.”
