Who needs BBC Breakfast? Naga Munchetty rakes in £18,000 in six months with side hustles

BBC Breakfast host Naga Munchetty raked in an average £3,000 a month from moonlighting during the first half of this year. 

Ms Munchetty, who will leave the morning show at the end of the year, earned a total of £18,000, half of which came from work for the exclusive members’ club, Soho House.

She was paid for a private event once a month from January to June, according to the BBC’s quarterly register, which shows its top staff’s earnings from external events such as after-dinner speeches, hosting Q&A sessions for firms and handing out gongs at corporate bashes.

Ms Munchetty, 51, is one of the Beeb’s highest paid stars, earning between £360,000 and £364,999.

In June, she took on two gigs. She was an ‘interviewer’ for Soho House and was paid up to £5,000, and she was a speaker for the US firm Sysco, the world’s largest food distributor. She was again paid up to £5,000. In May, she was an interviewer for the members’ organisation Women in Film & TV (UK). She scooped up to £1,000.

Back in February, she headed up a debate on The PR Network podcast Just Curious, talking about interviewing techniques. She was paid up to £1,000.

According to the podcast description, it says that Ms Munchetty shares how curiosity, analytical rigour and the discipline of asking the right questions have shaped her interviewing style, and why the best journalists know when to stay silent.

She also hosted a panel discussion about ‘access to the creative industries’ at Soho House in Manchester in January. The star was joined by New Order legend Peter Hook and Soho House CEO Andrew Carnie and was paid up to £5,000 for the event.

The previous week, she travelled to the Middle East to attend Emirates Airline Festival Of Literature in Dubai to give a talk on her book It’s Probably Nothing, which discusses her own experiences with the country’s healthcare and the bias against women in the medical profession.

Punters paid £15 a ticket for the one-hour show, while Ms Munchetty was handed up to £1,000. It’s not known if her travel and accommodation was on top of this.

Last year, it was revealed that Ms Munchetty had raked in up to £56,000 on top of her bumper BBC salary in 2024, which included up to £10,000 for work with a charity.

Rules on moonlighting were first tightened in 2020, when then-director general Tim Davie introduced a register of presenters’ outside earnings as part of a wider crackdown on impartiality concerns. 

They were unchanged until July, when chairman Samir Shah warned that presenters who leverage their BBC profile for outside work would now see it ‘factored into the deal we do’ on pay. 

In July Ms Munchetty announced that she was quitting BBC Breakfast after 17 years on the show, following a reported investigation into her conduct. Last year she was reportedly placed under review due to a formal probe over allegations she had bullied a junior staffer.

Ms Munchetty will become the new co-presenter of Radio 5 Live Breakfast, the station’s flagship morning programme. She is due to start in her new role in January.

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