BBC to decide on future of Jonathan Ross

Jonathan Ross will learn whether he can return to his job as a BBC presenter when the corporation’s governing body responds to the Andrew Sachs row today.

The BBC Trust will publish its findings about the obscene phone calls to the 'Fawlty Towers' actor broadcast on Russell Brand’s Radio 2 show last month.

Brand has already quit the BBC for his part in the affair and Ross is currently suspended without pay for three months.

BBC management will also release its report into the incident, which led to 42,000 complaints and the resignation of Radio 2’s well-respected controller.

Ross is widely predicted to keep his £6m (€7.1m)-a-year job after the BBC Trust issued a statement on Tuesday saying the decision to suspend him without pay was an “appropriate sanction”.

The controversy centres on messages the two presenters left on Sachs’s answerphone claiming Brand had slept with the 78-year-old actor’s granddaughter, Georgina Baillie, 23.

Extracts were aired during Brand’s Saturday night radio show on October 18.

The flamboyant comedian made a light-hearted apology to Sachs the following week but added: “It was quite funny.”

As the furore about the phone calls grew, Brand resigned along with Radio 2 boss Lesley Douglas and David Barber, the station’s head of specialist music and compliance.

BBC director-general Mark Thompson described the incident as a “gross lapse of taste”.

On November 8 the BBC broadcast apologies to Sachs, Miss Baillie and licence fee payers on Radio 2 at the times when Ross and Brand would have been on air.

Radio 2 said last week that Ross would return on January 24.

But BBC Trust chairman Michael Lyons insisted no final decision about the case had been made when he appeared before a Commons select committee this week.

“There is nothing that has been ruled out from the final deliberations of the BBC Trust,” he said.

This appeared to raise the possibility of further punishment for Ross.

Although the trust has no power to sack BBC employees, it could put pressure on Mr Thompson to take further action by saying the moves taken to redress the Sachs incident were insufficient.

But this looked less likely when the trust later issued a statement saying it did not expect the final BBC management report to change its view about Ross’s part in the incident.