BBC pays 'exceptional' staff £20m in bonuses

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Confidence in the corporation has hit an all-time low following a series of embarrassing scandals.

Yet almost half of its 23,000 employees received rewards for 'exceptional performance', amounting to £19,429,853 over 12 months up to June 2007.

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BBC programmes including Comic Relief and Children in Need were found to have misled viewers over phone-ins

Figures released under the Freedom of Information Act show that one anonymous employee received a one-off payment of £100,739 - although the average payout totalled £1,805.

The organisation's head of worldwide service, John Smith - who recently received a substantial pay rise taking his annual earnings to £460,000 - was paid the secondlargest bonus of £87,000.

Embarrassingly, Deputy Director-General Mark Byford - who strongly criticised the corporation following last month's Crowngate incident, in which footage of the Queen was shown out of sequence - also features on the list of top ten bonuses. The remaining eight figures, totalling £522,919, were awarded to anonymous recipients.

The revelation could hardly come at a worse time. Last month, the BBC was fined £50,000 for deceiving Blue Peter viewers over a phone-in competition. Six new shows were implicated in further fixes before the corporation suspended phone-in contests.

Claims that the Queen stormed out of a BBC documentary were false reported. It was only the BBC's editing that had made it look as though the monarch was furious