You're not Meryl Streep, love

Apparently tired of solely winking and playing quiz master Weakest Link matriarch, Anne Robinson has reprieved her role as host of Watchdog. Whether this is a last ditch attempt made by the BBC or Robinson personally to increase their popularity is yet to be revealed. For her roles in both shows she is paid an incredible £2 million a year, which, considering The Weakest Link has nowhere near the amount of viewers that it used to, is completely unfounded. Yet apparently a few million in the bank is not enough to drag Robinson out of bed in the morning and recently turned diva when she demanded the BBC to cover the costs for her own personal hairdresser and make up artist before she would appear on Breakfast television - to promote her own show. Presenting them with a bill of £550, she refused to appear unless her demands were met - and despite their dismay, the BBC obliged.

The big question is, why? Robinson is not a high profile star, far from it. It's not as if Mariah Carey was rocking up; it's an aging British television presenter who continues to raise herself on a pedastal despite the fact the viewing public dropped her from it a long time ago. We're in the middle of a recession for crying out loud and Robinson has the nerve to stamp her feet like a petulant child. Could she not fork out the £500 from her own wage packet? Oh wait, I forgot to consider the fact that first-class flight prices to the Bahamas have increased so she probably needs to scurry the cash away to cover the additional cost. Millions of women go to work every day with a hair cut they had hacked in to shape three weeks ago, and make up they hastily slap on ten minutes before they run out of the door - why should Ms. Robinson be any different? Are her hands incapable of working before 10am? Yes, yes, she's going on television but a swab of lipstick is a swab of lipstick and it's going to look rouge whether she puts it on personally or whether a twenty-something 'artist' does it for her. Surely the £9,000 she spent on plastic surgery a few years back and the botox injections she has on a regular basis would mean she wouldn't need a whole lot of make up and styling? Money well spent, apparently.

If I refused to set foot in public every morning until someone had pencilled on my eyeliner for me, my friends would give me a slap and tell me to get a grip. This is exactly what the BBC should have done. In a time when they are under continual scrutiny for various money cock-ups, ageism rows and politicians demanding the scrapping of the license fee, they should be doing everything in their power to create positive PR, not tales of mockery such as this. I'm sure Chris Moyles, Graham Norton and Jonathan Ross who all recently took pay cuts as the Corporation whined it needed to cut back on costs will soon have something to say about Robinson's blase attitude to money and the BBC's hypocritical spending choices.