A Blue Peter icon has slammed the “miserly” BBC and claims he’s “attempting to maintain his head above water” after starring on the kids’s tv programme throughout greater than half a century. Peter Purves was a presenter on the present since 1967 and made sporadic appearances till 2018, however in 2015 claimed he was left with a “lower than sufficient” pension from his many years of working for the broadcaster.

Talking in 2015 about his monetary scenario, Physician Who star Peter – who lives in a £1million nation property – stated he was “by no means paid what he ought to have been paid”, claiming: “The BBC had been miserly within the Nineteen Sixties and Seventies. One or two individuals appeared to feather their nests however I might by no means work out how that occurred. Doing Blue Peter, we weren’t allowed to do any ancillary work, which was bizarre.”

He was paid 35 guineas per episode in his first yr of engaged on the present, which equates to round £615 in at present’s cash. doing two episodes per week. By the point he first left in 1978, he was on £95 an episode – round £733 at present.

The star informed MailOnline: “I wasn’t terribly nicely paid nevertheless it amounted to an affordable earnings at a time when many individuals weren’t incomes a lot cash. It enabled me to purchase my first home.”

Peter defined that he didn’t obtain an occupational pension from the BBC as he was “self-employed”, explaining that he saved right into a “small” pension pot of his personal for 30 years. He fumed: “We weren’t sorted, to be trustworthy.”

The star stated the BBC would solely fly the Blue Peter stars in financial system class over time, explaining that now he splashes out on first-class air journey to journey the world.

Whereas the star is “mortgage-free”, he stated his “primary monetary precedence” was to “survive and hold my head above water”. He refuses to use for a bank card as a result of he’d be “too tempted to construct debt”.