Fiona Bruce says she was refused a pay rise after ‘BBC boss said she should rely on her boyfriend’

‘How ludicrous is that?’

BBC presenter Fiona Bruce studied at Hertford College, Oxford (BBC)

Fiona Bruce has revealed in an interview that she was once refused a pay rise because a BBC boss said she could rely on her boyfriend’s salary.

During an interview with British Vogue, the new Question Time host recalled the moment she asked her employer for a “desultory” pay rise during her early years at the BBC.

“My boss said: ‘Do you really need it? What does your boyfriend do? You live with him, don’t you? Doesn’t he pay for most things?’” Ms Bruce told the publication.

The 54-year-old said she replied at the time by saying: “Well, I do the supermarket shopping, so I need to pay for that.”

She added: “How ludicrous is that?”

Ms Bruce did not reveal when the pay rise discussion took place, nor whom it was with, but did go on to explain that the broadcaster was “not a nice place to be” when she started her career there in 1988.

“If the six o’clock [news] had a story they didn’t want the one o’clock [news] to know about, they wouldn’t put it in the running order,” she said.

“It was a terrible atmosphere – dog-eat-dog, bitchy, not a nice place to be.”

Ms Bruce joined the broadcaster as a researcher for Panorama, and over the next 14 years rose to become the first female newsreader on the BBC’s flagship News at Ten.

She has also presented some of the BBC’s most-loved light entertainment programmes, such as Antiques Roadshow and Fake or Fortune? and has become one of the corporation’s highest-paid stars, reportedly earning more than £350,000 a year.

But, while she might be the most senior front-of-camera woman at the BBC, Ms Bruce revealed that she still gets nervous.

“It was rather an unpleasant shock,” she said about her Question Time debut.

“For the first 10 minutes I thought, what is happening?”