Andrew Marr highlights 'disgrace' of Melvyn Bragg's sacking by the BBC

Andrew Marr highlights 'disgrace' of Melvyn Bragg's sacking by the BBC

Andrew Marr, who succeeded Melvyn Bragg as the presenter of Radio 4's Start the Week, says Bragg felt that the way he was treated by the BBC was a 'bloody disgrace'.

Andrew Marr Photo: BBC/IWC Media

By Richard Eden 6:22AM GMT 09 Jan 2011

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Andrew Marr may owe his position on the Radio 4 programme Start the Week to the removal of Melvyn Bragg, but he has spoken out about the BBC's treatment of its former presenter.

"Melvyn was incredibly dignified and stoic when he was sacked, but he was badly hurt," says Marr. "He never did, publicly, say it was a bloody disgrace, but he certainly felt it."

The BBC said it dropped Bragg to maintain political impartiality after he became a Labour peer, but when Sir Alan Sugar was later elevated to the Lords by Gordon Brown, he was allowed to stay on The Apprentice.

Lord Bragg said: "I wasn't political at all and the programme wasn't political. I didn't complain in public or much in private. I had 10 great years, but, yes, I was pushed. It was the first time I had ever been fired.

"I was put in the House of Lords as a Labour peer and the powers that be thought that being put in the House of Lords as a working peer wasn't consonant with presenting Start the Week. I was asked to leave and that was that."

Tony Blair's sports charity needs faith

Tony Blair made a profit of at least £710,000 last year from his mysterious web of companies, but one of his charities seems to have fared less well.

Mandrake learns that the Tony Blair Sports Foundation, which the former prime minister established in 2007 "to give something back to the North East", raised a total of £348,233 during its first period, until March 2010.

The figures are in stark contrast to those for another of his charities, the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, which, its latest accounts disclose, enjoyed an income of £3.7 million in its second year.

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