RADIO presenter Zoe Ball is now the highest paid woman at the BBC after getting a £1 million pay rise.
The 49-year-old star, who lives in Ditchling, is now on a salary of £1.3 million after bosses gave pay increases to women at the corporation.
The rise was reported by the Mail Online, which revealed staff costs at the BBC have reached £1.5 billion.
It is a big increase for the presenter, who was reportedly paid between £250,000 and £299,000 in 2017.
It makes her the second highest paid presenter at the corporation after Match Of The Day host Gary Lineker, who is on £1.75 million.
Pay rises have been given to more than 700 women at the corporation since concerns were raised over equal pay.
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But the corporation is also making job cuts, with 450 posts in regional journalism to go by 2022.
Ms Ball took over presenting the Radio 2 breakfast show from Chris Evans in January 2019.
In May it was revealed that the breakfast show has lost more than a million listeners compared with when Mr Evans presented the show.
Ms Ball drew an average of 8.1 million weekly listeners to her breakfast show in the first quarter of this year, compared with the 9.1 million listeners Mr Evans attracted in the final quarter of 2018.
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She said she takes the figures, gathered by Rajar, to heart.
But the latest figures are not available as Rajar has not been able to gather data during the coronavirus lockdown.
It is expected that many radio stations will have seen an increase in listeners.
Ms Ball has been in broadcasting since 1993 and was a host on Channel 4’s The Big Breakfast then BBC’s Live And Kicking during the 1990s.
She appeared on Strictly Come Dancing in 2005 and finished third and in 2011 became the presenter of the daily show It Takes Two.
More recently Ms Ball appeared on our screens with son Woody, 19, on Channel 4 episodes of celebrity Gogglebox during the coronavirus lockdown.
She married Brighton DJ Norman Cook (Fatboy Slim) in 1999, and they divorced in 2016.
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