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BBC’s latest Cannes of worms: French villa used ‘for jollies’
Robert Mendick, Chief Reporter03.08.09
The BBC admitted today to routinely hiring a £20,000-a week villa in Cannes for entertaining media executives.
The holiday home - once owned by the record producer Mickie Most - boasts an elegant swimming pool and terrace, panoramic views of the Mediterranean and its own private chef.
Figures released under the Freedom of Information Act show the corporation spent £90,530 in just three years, hiring the villa on five separate occasions. The BBC admitted to using the villa twice a year for “at least seven or eight years” - although figures on its cost are available only since 2006.
The BBC paid £73,838 to use the villa on just three separate occasions between October 2006 and October 2008 and a further £16,692 on travel and hospitality' during two stays in 2008 and 2009. The total cost of the villa, paid for out of licence payers money, is likely to be more than a quarter of a million pounds.
One TV executive who was a guest at the villa said: “It is a complete jolly. It is just wrong. They could stay in a hotel for 80 Euros a night.”
John Whittingdale, the Tory chairman of the Commons culture, media and sport select committee, said: “It does beg the question as to whether it is really necessary for the BBC to commit that amount of money in order to find commercial partners.
“You don't really have to put people up in a five-star villa in Cannes. At a time when the BBC is claiming to be short of cash, it does seem somewhat extravagant.”
The BBC hires the villa twice a year - in April and in October - for the five-day MipTV and Mipcom events which attracts television executives from around the world, negotiating deals for the financing and selling of projects and programmes.
The BBC insisted the villa was good vale for money, pointing out the corporation's Commercial Agency raises more than £80 million a year in investment for programmes from co-production partners, distributors and publishers.
In a statement the BBC said: “Mip and Mipcom are the main markets at which this business is conducted and hiring a villa has proved a cost-effective way of accommodating BBC staff and entertaining clients, distribution and co-production partners from around the world in support of this business.”
A spokesman said the villa was being looked at gain for this October's Mipcom event, adding: “It's a fair spend.”
In the latest row to hit the corporation, it emerged over the weekend that Jay Hunt, who earns £280,000 a year as Controller of BBC1, is involved in running a private company which provides training to the broadcaster.
Ms Hunt, 42, is listed as the company secretary of BrightsparkTV which charges thousands of pounds for training presenters who work for the channel.
The company is run by Ms Hunt's husband Ian Blandford, 40 and made a pre-tax profit of more than £117,000 last year.
Its websites site includes glowing testimonials from BBC presenters including Sports editor Mihir Bose and Olympic rower-turned BBC host Matthew Pinsent.
The organisation has a contract with the BBC to coach staff and it also uses the corporation's studios to carry out its training session.
Reader views (20)
Has Mr Whittingdale never availed himself of similar hospitality? Perhaps we should be told???
- Katie, Yorkshire, England
I stayed at this Villa a few times and its well worth the money! The view from the pool is amazing!
- Jimmy, London
Poor reporting I'm afraid. During festivals in Cannes (I've been to several, reporting on them) the 4,000 rooms available are significantly oversubscribed by the (up to) 30,000 people in town for the trade show. Hoteliers use this fact to double/treble room rates and force punitive minimum stay rules. To say you can stay somewhere for €80 is just wrong. If you'd made more than two calls to stand this one up, you'd know that.
Often hiring villas can be the most cost effective thing to do - a large number of people can stay there for one or two nights each, and you can host parties (which are an essential part of doing business at the festivals) much more cheaply than if being scalped by one of the available venues for hire in the town, and then by their in-house caterers. If anyone is ripping off the licence payer, it's the hoteliers of the Ville de Cannes.
At a time when people in all walks of life are being accused of inappropriate expenses (let's have a look at the Standard's record shall we?), this kind of ill-informed reporting is not useful. We need to focus on the genuine abuses (of which there are many), not things which are a necessary part of international business or politics.
- Ross, Reigate, UK
It what happens when an organisation is allowed to demand money from the public year after year on pain of imprisonment and never account for itself.
There'll be much worse discovered; no doubt there are straight thefts and other con-tricks going on at the Beeb. What's to stop it with a business culture like this?
- T2, Walthamstow
Your BBC South of France Villa Hire, has brought out the usual smattering of known-prejudices from under-the-carpet. International TV Sales, can(nes) NOT be made over-apologetically in 'a dirty-old mack'. At least one of the comments, recognises that the Villa-hire represents 'Good-Value for the Purposes'. BBC World-Wide has a lot of sought-after products in its Catalogue, and must represent itself on an equal-par. Monies DO come-back into the Coffers, to the Benefit of all U.K. Viewers. Les Environs de Cote D'Azur
are Certainly not Cheap - but the BBC deserves to hold its head-up-high!
- Roger Bailey, GROVE PARK, LONDON.
Time to stop funding such apalling wastage of public monies.I suggest you start with Radio 1.
This station is only concerned with ratings and is managed like a commercial station. This is not the brief of a public radio station. If it is to be managed like a commercial station then it should be funded like a commercial station.
Rob
- Rob, London
As a retired BBC producer, I deem the BBC has been in the hands of opportunistic time-servers with low moral standards for the last thirty years.
- Hector Vigo, VIGO - SPAIN
Whats a TV licence, I use FREE VIEW.
- John Sherlock, London
why not BBC hire stripogram for the executives as well?
- Fodil, london,uk
They are only copying what their political masters do!
- Tonyjohnson, Hythe Kent
Yet another example of the grotesque and self-indulgent profligacy with which the BBC sprays around the licence-payer's money. If the BBC's reputation is as exalted as it claims, it has no need of such fripperies in order to buy and sell programmes. Austerity should be its watchword even in rosy economic times - still more so in the present dismal climate.
- Richard, London, London. UK
The BBC is taking the mickey with the way it throws licence payer's money about. Perhaps a newspaper, like The Telegraph should take up a crusade to explore the BBC's accounts in great depth and publish who gets what, who wastes what, who is paid what and which names are on this expenses dolce vita gravy train and shame them?
- Albert Hall, hove england
I've covered these TV festivals and markets as a reporter and I can tell you that all the international TV companies do the same thing. The Beeb sells hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of programming through these events and I would echo local resident Peter Johns that for once it's value for money.
- Eduardo, Belsize Park
The BBC network was set up by the government and is government controlled. It's not up to us how the license (tax) money is spent. The license fees will go up as usual next year, just like their other monopolies on tobacco and alcohol. The BBC still makes good programs, but also with a good deal of soft hypnotic thought control. I interviewed for a job with the BBC back in 1978 and was told that I was over qualified. I had about 6 interviewers and all the awkward questions one could imagine. It felt more like a trial than an interview. It should be known as the BGBN, British Government Broadcasting Network, that would be a more accurate description.
- Stevie, Haarlem Netherlands
Whichever 'TV executive' said that they could get a room in a hotel in Cannes for 80 euros per night during MIP has clearly never been there. Living in Cannes as I do, I know that the price of rooms in semi-decent hotels during those periods is 3-4 times that amount. The cost of entertaining in those hotels during the festivals/markets is also astronomical. So it is likely, rather than probable, that from a cost point of view hiring the villa makes sense.
One tends to think that the so-called journalists who write these articles have massive chips on their shoulders and are just looking to find a story where none exists. Pathetic!
- Peter Johns, Nice, France
The BBC is self serving first and foremost seasoned with a healthy dose of self-righteousness.
- Simon, London
BBC is valeu for money innit
- Iqubal Saleem-Choudry, London
The hiring of villas and massive boats in Cannes for the Mip markets in April and October is nothing new. I'm surprised its taken so long for someone to notice. Then there's the bar bills, the restaurants, the gifts, the five-star hotels and room service, the assistant's assistants who have no real business being there......the BBC are very generous with our money, excpet of course if you have a programme to sell - then they plead cutbacks and tell you how they can't afford to make decent programmes any more whist nursing a champaine hangover. This has been going on for years. Everyone wants to sell them programmes/buy their programmes/partner with them on productions - so how come they need to spend so much money entertaining? The BBC is a massive gravey train for the execs who milk the system beyond belief. They could teach the MP's a thing or two about expenses!
- Mary, Watford
No wonder more and more people now call it the Anti-British Broadcasting Corporation.
The anti-British Broadcasting Corporation should now be financed by the Scottish Parliament judging by the amount of Scottish accents now heard which itself is discrimination for the English account for 84% of UK's population while Scot's just 8%. So we should be hearing 10 times more English accents!
- Joe, Thornton Heath, London, England.
It is time to pull the rug from under Aunties feet. The BBC has not represented the interests of the people who fund it through the enforced TV tax for years now.
90% of the UK is white, wouldn't think it watching the BBC.
- Frank, Home Counties, England.
