Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer is to hold talks with the BBC director-general Tim Davie on Sunday over “deeply concerning” allegations about one of its presenters.
The presenter allegedly first requested images from the youth in 2020 when they were aged 17 and has made a series of payments over the years, according to The Sun.
In a statement ahead of the meeting, a Department of Culture, Media and Sport spokesperson said: “These allegations are deeply concerning.
Image: Culture secretary Lucy Frazer
“As a public service broadcaster in receipt of public funding, senior officials have stressed to the BBC that the allegations must be investigated urgently and sensitively, with the department kept informed.
“The culture secretary will be speaking to Tim Davie later today.”
Image: BBC Director-General Tim Davie
In new allegations published in The Sun on Sunday, the young person’s mother said she was “shocked” when her child showed her a screenshot of the video chat, in which the well-known presenter was sitting in his boxer shorts on a sofa at his home.
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She said the man appeared to be “leaning forward, getting ready for my child to perform for him.”
“My child told me, ‘I have shown things’ and this was a picture from some kind of video call,” she added.
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The newspaper did not say when the alleged incident happened.
The mother also said that earlier this year she was shocked when she overheard the presenter “on the phone saying to my child: ‘I told you not to f***ing ring me’.”
No one involved has been named, but The Sun said the presenter has not been suspended. It is understood he is still being paid his six-figure salary in full.
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2:30
What we know about claims against BBC star
The newspaper said the family made a complaint on 19 May but came forward to The Sun after becoming frustrated that the man was still on air a month later.
The mother said her child told her they had also received a payment of £1,000 via PayPal in June which suggested that the “BBC hadn’t spoken to this man” in the weeks after the initial complaint.
The presenter is now off-air and the BBC has reportedly launched an investigation, although the corporation has not confirmed this.
Several political figures have been critical of the BBC’s handling of the allegations, with Labour’s shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves telling Sky News’ Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme that the allegations were “deeply concerning”.
“The idea that some presenters think they act with impunity and they can get away with these sorts of things – it does call into question the ethics, the investigations, how long these things take,” she said.
“And the BBC, but also other broadcasters, do need to get a grip because we seem to lurch from one scandal to another, and more needs to be done.”
Ms Pasquet said: “A lot of the African-American soldiers had really loved their experience here and had brought back the cognac. And I think that stayed because this African-American community truly is a community. and they want to drink like their grandfather did.”
The ties remain with rappers like Jay Z’s love for cognac.
However, Ms Pasquet adds: “There’s also this other community of people who have been drinking bourbon for a long time, love bourbon, but find the prices just outrageous today. So they want to try something different.”
Image: Amy Pasquet owns JLP Cognac with her husband
JLP’s products were served at New York’s prestigious Met Gala.
They were preparing to launch new product lines in the US. But now that’s in doubt.
It is hard being an American in France now, Ms Pasquet says.
She continues: “They’re like, okay, America’s forgotten how close France and America are as far as (their) relationship is concerned. And I think that’s hurtful on both sides. I think it’s important to remember that the US is many things, and not just this one person, and there are millions of inhabitants that didn’t vote for him.”
A fresh challenge for a centuries-old tradition
Making cognac takes years, using techniques that go back centuries. In another vineyard we met Pierre Louis Giboin whose family have been doing it for more than 200 years.
In a cellar dating back to the French Revolution, barrels of oak sit under thick cobwebs, ageing the brandy.
The walls are lined with a unique black mould that thrives off the vapours of cognac.
They have seen threats come and go over those centuries, wars, weather, pestilence. But never from a country they regard as one of their oldest allies and best of customers.
Image: Pierre Louis Giboin’s cellar dates back to the French revolution
Mr Trump’s tariffs, says Mr Giboin, now threaten a way of life.
“It’s at the end of like very good times in the Cognac region. It’s been like 10 years when everything’s been perfect, we have good harvest, we sell really easily all the stock, but now I mean it’s the end.”
Ms Pasquet and Mr Giboin are unusual.
Most cognac makers sell their produce through the drink’s four big houses, Hennessy, Remy Martin, Martell and Courvoisier.
Some have been told the amounts they can sell have been drastically reduced.
Independents though like them must find new markets if the tariff threat persists.
Confusion away from the chaos
Outside in the dappled light of a Cognac evening Mr Giboin and I toast glasses of pineau – the diluted form of cognac drunk as an aperitif.
In this idyllic corner of France, a world away from Washington, Mr Trump’s trade war on Europe simply makes no sense.
“He’s like angry against the whole world and the way he talks like that Europe the EU was made against the US to cheat on the US. It’s just crazy to think like this,” Mr Giboin says.
It’s not just what Mr Trump’s done. It’s how Europe now strikes back that concerns the French. And it’s not just in Cognac where they’re concerned
France exports more than €2bn worth of wine to America.
In the heart of the Bordeaux wine region, Sylvie Courselle’s family have been making wine since the 1940s at their Chateau Thieuley vineyard.
It’s bottling season but they can’t prepare the wine headed for America while everything is up in the air.
Showing me the unused reels of US labels for her wine she told me she was losing sleep over the uncertainty.
Later she was meeting with her American distributors.
Gerry Keogh sells Ms Courselle’s wine across the US.
He says the entire industry is reeling
Image: Sylvie Courselle with distributers
Image: The Chateau Thieuley vineyard in the Bordeaux wine region
“I think it’s like anything. You don’t really believe it’s happening. And even when you’re in the midst of it, it was kind of like 9/11.
“You’re like… This is actually happening. It’s unbelievable. And when you start seeing the repercussions from the stock market, et cetera, and how it’s impacting every level, it’s quite shocking.”
They know the crisis is far from over and could now escalate.
“We feel stuck in the middle of this commercial war and we don’t have the weapons to fight, I think,” Ms Courselle said.
It is, she says, very stressful.
Image: Gerry Keogh
The histories of America and France have been intertwined for centuries through revolutions against tyranny and two wars fighting for liberty.
America used to call France its oldest ally, but under Mr Trump it is now being as turned on, as France, along with the rest of Europe, finds itself in what many would argue is a reckless and unjustified trade war.
It is all doing enormous harm to relations between the US and its European allies.
How Europe now decides to retaliate will help determine the extent of that damage.
Donald Trump’s trade tariffs on what he calls “the worst offenders” come into effect at 5am UK time, with China facing by far the biggest levy.
The US will hit Chinese imports with 104% tariffs, marking a significant trade escalation between the world’s two largest superpowers.
At a briefing on Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Donald Trump “believes that China wants to make a deal with the US,” before saying: “It was a mistake for China to retaliate.
“When America is punched, he punches back harder.”
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0:54
White House announces 104% tariff on China
After Mr Trump announced sweeping levies last week – hitting some imported goods from China with 34% tariffs – Beijing officials responded with like-for-like measures.
The US president then piled on an extra 50% levy on China, taking the total to 104% unless it withdrew its retaliatory 34% tariff.
China’s commerce ministry said in turn that it would “fight to the end”, and its foreign ministry accused the US of “economic bullying” and “destabilising” the world’s economies.
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‘Worst offender’ tariffs also in effect
Alongside China’s 104% tariff, roughly 60 countries – dubbed by the US president as the “worst offenders” – will also see levies come into effect today.
The EU will be hit with 20% tariffs, while countries like Vietnam and Cambodia see a 46% levy and 49% rate respectively.
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What’s going on with the US and China?
Since the tariffs were announced last Wednesday, global stock markets have plummeted, with four days of steep losses for all three of the US’ major indexes.
As trading closed on Tuesday evening, the S&P 500 lost 1.49%, the Nasdaq Composite fell 2.15%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.84%.
According to LSEG data, S&P 500 companies have lost $5.8tn (£4.5tn) in stock market value since last Wednesday, the deepest four-day loss since the benchmark was created in the 1950s.
Image: Global stock markets have been reeling since Trump’s tariff announcement last week. Pic: AP
Meanwhile, the US president signed four executive orders to boost American coal mining and production.
The directives order: • keeping some coal plants that were set for retirement open; • directing the interior secretary to “acknowledge the end” of an Obama-era moratorium that paused coal leasing on federal lands; • requiring federal agencies to rescind policies transitioning the US away from coal production, and; • directing the Department of Energy and other federal agencies to assess how coal energy can meet rising demand from artificial intelligence.
At a White House ceremony, Mr Trump said the orders end his predecessor Joe Biden’s “war on beautiful clean coal,” and miners “will be put back to work”.