The BBC Trust announced today it would not be taking any further action against Jonathan Ross over obscene phone calls made to Fawlty Towersactor Andrew Sachs broadcast on Russell Brand's Radio 2 show last month.
Trust chairman Sir Michael Lyons said: “We have underlined very clearly that it is not the job of the trust to make decisions about the terms and conditions of performers or the sanctions that are applied to them when they are found to be wanting.
“We are very clear that the director general has taken the right action with respect to Jonathan Ross.”
Brand has already quit the BBC for his part in the affair, and Ross is suspended without pay for three months.
BBC management is also to release its report into the incident, which led to 42,000 complaints and the resignation of Radio 2’s controller.
Ross was widely predicted to keep his £6 million-a-year job after the BBC Trust issued a statement on Tuesday saying the decision to suspend him without pay was an “appropriate sanction”.
The controversy centres on messages the two presenters left on Sachs’s answerphone claiming Brand had slept with the 78-year-old actor’s granddaughter, Georgina Baillie (23). Extracts were aired during Brand’s Saturday night radio show on October 18th.
Brand made a light-hearted apology to Sachs the following week but added: “It was quite funny.”
As the furore about the phone calls grew, Brand resigned along with Radio 2 boss Lesley Douglas and David Barber, the station’s head of specialist music and compliance.
BBC director-general Mark Thompson described the incident as a “gross lapse of taste”.
On November 8th the BBC broadcast apologies to Sachs, Miss Baillie and licence fee payers on Radio 2 at the times when Ross and Brand would have been on air.
Radio 2 said last week that Ross would return on January 24th. But BBC Trust chairman Sir Michael Lyons insisted no final decision about the case had been made when he appeared before a Commons select committee this week.
Although the trust has no power to sack BBC employees, it could have put pressure on Mr Thompson to take further action by saying the moves taken to redress the Sachs incident were insufficient.
PA