This male BBC star earns £2m more than his female counterpart

In contrast, Strictly Come Dancing host Claudia Winkleman, the network’s highest-paid woman during this time period, drew a salary between £450,000 ($586,080) and £499,999 ($651,199) – less than a quarter of Evans’. And radio host Chris Evans, the broadcast network’s chief earner, takes home more than $2.9 million – about 20 times the salary of the United Kingdom prime minister. “We have set the most stretching targets in the industry for on-air diversity and we’ve made progress, but we recognize there is more to do and we are pushing further and faster than any other broadcaster”.

He continued: “We’ve got jobs that people would kill for, we get to do things that people would pay to do if they could afford it and sometimes those things aren’t even available to buy”.

“We’ve said again and again that there’s a problem with excess pay”, he said.

Earlier in the day he posted: “Happy BBC salary day”. At number one: Chris Evans, the radio and TV presenter who hosted Top Gear for one series. A decade ago it might have been just ITV or Sky or commercial radio. It’s going to change the market for talent in this country’.

The former footballer presented Match of the Day and other football programmes as well as covering Euro 2016 and the FA Cup 2016.

This is in stark contrast to colleague Gabby Logan who earnt between £200,000 and £249,000.

George Alagiah, Jason Mohammad and Trevor Nelson are the highest paid BAME presenters, each receiving between £250,000 and £300,000.

“By 2020 we’ll have equality between men and women on air, and we’ll have the pay gap sorted by then too”, Hall says. “Leave it at that”, he said.

“We lost those arguments”.

Take That singer Gary Barlow, who fronted BBC Talent show Let It Shine, is also listed in the same band.

If the lowest-paid BBC worker earned £25,000, just above the average United Kingdom wage, for example, then Lineker, the former footballer who presents Match of the Day, would see his pay capped at £500,000. Graham Norton places third with an annual salary of £850,000-£899,999 – though this figure doesn’t include earnings from his BBC One chat show, which is made by an independent production company. The broadcaster fought against the list being published, but was forced by the government as part of its new 11-year royal charter.