Ross: negative press drove me to quit BBC

Jonathan Ross said today the “sheer volume of negative press” he was attracting to the BBC was one of the reasons he quit the corporation.

The presenter’s time at the BBC was marked by controversy and he left his BBC1 chat show and Radio 2 programme this year.

He said: “To be honest it was the sheer volume of negative press I was receiving and that was being aimed at them via me so I thought it was best if I left.”

Ross was suspended for 12 weeks without pay in 2008 after he and Russell Brand left obscene messages on Andrew Sach’s answerphone which were broadcast on Brand’s Radio 2 show.

He also came under fire for his salary, rumoured to be worth £18m (€21.6m) over three years, and also for a controversial interview with David Cameron on his Friday night chat show, where he asked the Tory leader whether he had ever had schoolboy sexual fantasies about former prime minister Margaret Thatcher.