Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Balding holding the folding
Star on £1m a year from her own firm
CLARE Balding has been revealed as one of TV’S best-paid women, taking home £1million a year.
She and her wife, Alice Arnold, took dividends of £2million in the last two years from their firm, Clearly Clare Ltd. The BBC revealed this week that Balding, the Bafta-award winning Olympics and Wimbledon presenter, was paid between £180,000 and £189,999.
But her income soars when her work for BT and book deals are included. She also presents Crufts and has her own Radio 4 show, Ramblings.
Balding, 47, and broadcaster Arnold, 56, are both directors of the firm and the dividend of £1.9million in 2016 and £125,210 in 2017 could include both women’s earnings.
But it means Balding’s pay packet could top Claudia Winkleman’s, who was thought to be the BBC’S highest paid woman. She rakes in up to £380,000 for a Radio 2 show and “a range of HERE’S Madonna with her own family tree as she and her six children visit a paediatric hospital in Malawi named after one of her daughters.
The pop veteran visited Mercy James Centre a year after it opened.
Eldest girl Lourdes, 21, son Rocco Ritchie, 17, adopted Malawian siblings David Banda and Mercy, both 12, and five-year-old twins Estere and Stella all beamed broadly for the shot.
The centre is the south east African country’s only children’s hospital and it has saved thousands of lives.
Madonna, who turns 60 next month, dressed in scrubs for a visit to the operating theatre, while Mercy was pictured holding a sick baby.
The singer posted: “Only paediatric hospital of its kind #soproud.” programmes and series” – with Strictly earnings on top.
Balding previously said she was “lucky and well-rewarded”. But she said firms should not be paying high wages only to those people who shouted the loudest.
She said: “The only reason Anne Robinson was paid as much as the men is because she scared the s*** out of them, and we shouldn’t have to do that.”