Vanessa Feltz’s shortcomings as a presenter in the eyes of her editor at the BBC have been sent to all of the corporation’s staff in an email error.
Feltz’s performance on her BBC Radio London breakfast programme was “constricted and lacking personality”, according to a routine assessment.
David Robey, editor of the station, had intended to attach a television trailer to the message but appears to have selected the wrong file.
The document, leaked to the Sun, described how Feltz, 55, had struggled to adjust to presenting the breakfast show, a role that she took on in January last year. Previously she hosted the mid-morning phone-in on the station for ten years. The review suggested that she had not been able to “find the right balance between her skills and the much tighter format”. The weekly audience for the show has fallen from 208,000 last year to 161,000 this year.
A publicist for Feltz, who is paid between £350,000 and £399,000, did not respond to a request for comment.
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A BBC spokesman said: “Vanessa’s programmes have consistently delivered strong listening figures . . . She is an asset to the station and we have every confidence in her.”
The error comes after Feltz was the target of an antisemitic article in The Sunday Times, in which Kevin Myers suggested that she and Claudia Winkleman were among the best-paid women presenters at the BBC because they were Jewish. The article, printed in the Ireland edition of the newspaper, has been deleted and Myers was sacked.