PAY is no longer a private matter, and certainly not in television. Sandi Toksvig is the most recent celebrity to break the code of reticence around pay, claiming she is being paid 60% less than Stephen Fry was as host of the BBC2 game-show QI.

It is a revelation that throws light on two important issues: gender pay gaps and the “bonus” broadcasters pay for star value.

Last week, Ruth Davidson weighed-in on the debate too, admitting that the media’s capacity for “dirty money” stretches back to her own time in radio, when she was paid a fraction of a male colleague’s salary at the BBC.

The magic money tree has been exposed in all its beneficence last week, when Chris Evans announced his imminent departure to work for Virgin Radio.

Many will be baffled by how Chris Evans pulls off such lucrative transfers. It’s like the final years of David Beckham’s football career, when the brand mattered more than the performance.

The veteran broadcaster Libby Purves described the departure of Chris Evans as “the first flakes of gilded plaster falling off the grand old structure”. It’s poetic I admit, but nowhere close to the truth.

There is no doubt that Chris Evans has talent. Having worked with him, he has an agile mind and a remarkable capacity for ideas. Evans is arguably a better producer than a presenter. But big deals happen when the market loses its marbles and when the BBC loses perspective on its core purposes.

Many of today’s channel bosses are bewitched by the economic sorcery of television – format sales, share-options and the revenues that flow from replicable factual entertainment shows. Like the PPI deals that funded crumbling schools, crippling public bodies with debt, there is deep confusion about the balance between public service and commercial gain.

I remain suspicious of the argument that the BBC operates in a highly competitive market and must therefore pay handsomely to secure on-screen talent. There is a very powerful counter-argument – walk away from the table. If presenters have an opportunity to improve their income in the commercial sector, the answer should be “fine, we’ll develop someone else”. The BBC has a mandate to showcase talent, not to feather the nest of its stars.

Criticism of BBC salaries has intensified in recent years and that is not going to relax any time soon. The political consensus that once protected the licence fee has broken down. Divisive general elections, the Scottish independence referendum, the rise of the internet, the Brexit debate and increased expectations of transparency in public life after the Westminster expenses scandal have led to greater scrutiny of the licence fee.

The days when deals could be hidden away are long gone and what the BBC pays its highest earners is now a legitimate arena of public debate and reasonable dissent.

At the heart of the current presenters dispute is the use of so-called personal service companies (PSCs), which are privately-owned companies that allow an individual presenter to pay themselves dividends and be taxed after expenses. Hector smelt a rat and the BBC are now under pressure to deduct tax through the conventional PAYE system. Put simply they are expected to fall into line with most other employers.

One presenter, Christa Ackroyd, who presented the regional news show Look North, recently lost her appeal against the new regulations at a first-tier tax tribunal, and faces a tax bill of up to £420,000. Ackroyd worked in a factual department based in the north of England, and is something of an anomaly. Most of the big tax cases are in entertainment and in the overheated London production sector.

I confess I have a dog in the fight. On Saturdays, I present BBC Scotland’s Off The Ball, a radio carnival which takes great joy in mocking the hypocrisies and voodoo economics of modern football. For transparency, my weekly wage for the two live Saturday shows is £850. I am taxed at source. No complaints either: to be paid to talk shite about football is a jammy way to earn a living, and I hold my hands up.

AS a response to HMRC pressure, the BBC now offers presenters a slate of four different contract types, and with the clock ticking on PSCs, the Beeb has invited presenters to choose a way forward. At one end of the spectrum, there is a contract that is close to a traditional staff contract; at the other end a looser arrangement that contracts the presenter as a taxable individual, but with no staff benefits, such as pension contributions, holiday pay, or paternity leave etc.

It was an easy trade off in my case and I chose the flexibility to author books, write newspaper columns and be free to voice opinions off-air without prior reference to senior management.

Others, including Chris Evans, dug in their heels and are disputing the process. Evans was keen to continue his personal service company status and knew that as a BBC staff member the door would slam shut on his outside commercial activities.

Whatever your thoughts on Evans, the man is in demand, and we are not talking opening supermarkets in Sanquhar. He earns substantial additional sums in product endorsement, brand associations and high-value corporate appearances. Leaving the BBC will give him greater range to exploit his popularity.

Whether presenters like it or not, their pay does not exist in isolation, nor can it ever be a truly private matter. Pay is often the key to unlocking bigger issues. Are presenters paying tax at a level that reflects the lives of most viewers? Does the licence-fee payer get value for money? Does the BBC allocate resources across the UK in ways that are equitable?

With the departure of Chris Evans, Gary Lineker now becomes the BBC’s top earner. He is paid more than £1.75 million per annum mostly for presenting football shows. Not only is that a colossal sum of money, it opens up a host of further questions.

Lineker’s salary is roughly the cost of 100 journalism trainees, 30 Avid post-production suites and 10 extremely well-funded prime-time documentaries. Is he worth that? It has yet to be proven in up-to-date annual accounts but many now think that Lineker is paid more than the total the BBC allocates to football rights in Scotland. That may be an exaggeration and fearsomely difficult to prove, but a salary that even invites those comparisons is not good news.

Gary Lineker is a gifted presenter and seems a decent man. His backstory as a former English internationalist makes him a good fit for the BBC’s biggest market in England. But is his salary proportionate to the role? Is football worth the investment it gets? Does football impoverish other deserving sports? Why in times of challenged budgets is an already wealthy retired footballer being paid so handsomely to read auto-cue and swap banter with his old mates?

These are delicate times. A major question mark hangs over the resourcing of Scotland’s new BBC channel. The launch of a new service is a historic opportunity to repair some of the damage that has been done to the BBC’s reputation in Scotland. It would be a shame if underfunding for Pacific Quay coincided with a very public scandal around presenters and their inflated pay.

Stuart Cosgrove is a writer and broadcaster. The latest instalment of his award-winning Soul Trilogy – Harlem 69: The Future of Soul will be published by Polygon in October