Ritula shah age
Furious BBC presenter hits out over ‘vastly lower’ pay after quitting corporation following 35 years on air
A VETERAN BBC presenter says she will “never understand” why women bosses allowed her to be paid less than her male colleagues.
Ritula Shah quit Radio 4 this year after 35 years, including stints on flagship shows the World Tonight, Woman’s Hour, and Any Questions.
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The 56-year-old said discovering she was paid “vastly lower” than men doing the same job was a “really painful episode”.
She told Roger Bolton’s Beeb Watch podcast: “I still can’t quite get over it.
"I couldn’t find a single person who was doing a comparable job to me who was paid less.”
Asked if she knew why senior female managers did nothing about it, she replied: “It’s a kind of benign neglect.
"I’m not sure that excuses it.”
She finally left as she felt at the “other end of the age range” to those the BBC wants to attract.
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Ex-BBC presenter, 56, says she is yet to 'get over' discovering she was being paid tens of thousands of pounds less than her male counterparts
A former BBC presenter says she is yet to 'get over' discovering she was being paid tens of thousands of pounds less than her male counterparts.
Ritula Shah, 56, worked for the BBC for 35 years presenting popular shows such as Woman's Hour, World Today, Any Questions and most recently The World Tonight.
Ms Shah, who now presents a show on Classic FM, quit after she felt resourcing was getting 'thinner and thinner' and that realistically she was 'other end of the range' compared to the young people the national broadcaster was trying to attract.
But Shah also explained that she still cannot 'get over' discovering how much less she was being paid than male colleagues doing the same job.
'It's a really painful episode in my life and I still can't quite get over it, even though it's now behind me,' she told Roger Bolton's Beeb Watch podcast.
Pictured: Ritula Shah, 56, worked for the BBC for 35 years presenting popular shows such as Woman's Hour, World Today, Any Questions and most recently The World Tonight
The BBC equal pay scandal was exposed when fellow presenter Samira Ahmed won an employment tribunal in 2020 after claiming she had been underpaid £700,000 compared to Jeremy Vine.
At the time the Director of News at the BBC was a woman, Fran Unsworth, and it was during the row that Shah discovered she was a victim too.
'I discovered during the course of the equal pay row that I was paid in the tens of thousands when all my colleagues were paid in the hundreds of thousands.
'I was paid vastly lower than my colleagues. We're talking about colleagues who were presenters on radio. We're not talking about correspondents, we're not talking about celebrities that appear on light entertainment programmes.
'If you bring television into it it gets even worse.
'I was really shocked. I went around asking everyone t British radio presenter (born 1967) Ritula Harakchand Shah (born 1967) is a presenter on Classic FM. She was formerly a news presenter on BBC Radio, serving as the main presenter of The World Tonight on BBC Radio 4. Previously, Shah presented Woman's Hour on Radio 4 and was a launch presenter for The World Today on the BBC World Service. Shah joined The World Tonight as Deputy Presenter and also presented the Saturday edition of PM. From the departure of Robin Lustig until 27 February 2023, Shah was the lead presenter of The World Tonight. It was announced on 13 April 2023 that Shah was to join Classic FM from BBC Radio 4 to present Calm Classics on weekdays between 10pm and 1am. She made her debut on the music station on 17 April 2023. Ritula Harakhchand Shah was born in 1967 in Barnet, North London. She was educated at Haberdashers' Aske's School for Girls, Elstree, before studying history at the University of Warwick and graduating in 1988. She joined the Radio 4 production team, moved from there to regional television news, and then to Today in 1991 as a producer. When The World Today launched on the BBC World Service in 1999, Shah became one of its presenters. She was a presenter on the BBC World Service's The Real Story. In May 2013, she began a series of eight episodes in the BBC Radio 4 One to One series of interviews. As she belongs to a Jain family (the Jain religion is concerned with renunciation), the subjects of her interviews are people whose life has involved renunciation.South Asia Team George Arney
George Arney has been broadcasting to South Asia - and reporting from it - for most of his working life. After studying Indian history and politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and then spending a year travelling around India, he joined the BBC in 1982 as a commentator on South Asian affairs, covering such momentous events as Operation Bluestar and the assassination of Indira Gandhi. His first foreign posting was to Pakistan in 1986, from where he reported on the Soviet pullout from Afghanistan and the mysterious death of General Ziaul Haq. An interlude away from the BBC followed, during which he lived in a remote village in north-east Thailand, working as a farmer, hotelier and freelance journalist. In 1994, he was posted as BBC correspondent in Sri Lanka in 1994, where he reported on on elections, assassinations, peace talks and invasions, while narrowly escaping death in a rebel ambush in Colombo. He has been presenting the World Today since its launch, as well as travelling all over the world for BBC Radio 4. He’s married to the BBC Arts correspondent Razia Iqbal, and has three children.^^ Ritula Shah
Ritula joined the World Today at its launch in January 1999. As well as the World Today for South Asia, she also regularly presents the Europe and East Asia editions of the programme. Before arriving at the World Service, she worked for Today, the leading domestic news and current affairs programme. She began as a researcher in 1991 and was then appointed Senior Producer, a role which includes editing and planning the programme. Today's agenda includes foreign and domestic news and is known for its tough interviews and diverse coverage of issues ranging from politics to the environment. Ritula joined the BBC after graduating from Warwick University in 1988. After a short spell as a researcher for Radio 4 Features in Birmingham, she moved Ritula Shah
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