The creator of Have I Got News For You has revealed he wants Angus Deayton back as the show’s host – almost two decades after the BBC fired him over his alleged use of cocaine and prostitutes.
Jimmy Mulville, the managing director of the show’s makers, Hat Trick Productions, said Deayton had ‘served his time’ after the allegations and he was ‘a very good host’.
Deayton, 65, made headlines in May 2002 after reports in the News of The World emerged that he had allegedly hired prostitute Caroline Martin in Manchester and had sex with her.
It was also alleged Martin and Deayton used cocaine together while at a hotel in London together.
The host was later fired in October 2002 after further headlines emerged of a further affair with another woman. At the time, his now ex-partner Lise Mayer was at home while pregnant.
In an interview being broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Wednesday morning and obtained by The Times, Mulville said: ‘I think it’d be very nice for him [to come back to Have I Got News For You]. We’re all a little older now.
‘He’s definitely served his time, and he was a very good host.’
Jimmy Mulville, the managing director of the show’s makers, Hat Trick Productions, said Angus Deayton had ‘served his time’ after the allegations and he was ‘a very good host’. Pictured: Deayton (centre) with panellists Paul Merton (right) and Ian Hislop (left)
Deayton, 65, made headlines in May 2002 after reports in the News of The World emerged that he had allegedly hired prostitute Caroline Martin in Manchester and had sex with her. At the time, his now ex-partner Lise Mayer (right with Deayton) was at home while pregnant
Paul Merton unveiled a T-shirt with the News of the World’s ‘Deayton’s sex romp with vice girl’ front page emblazoned across it
Mulville revealed that Deayton travelled to Italy after the allegations emerged in the News of the World following an interview with Martin, but he was convinced to come back to the UK and present the next show.
At the start of the next Have I Got News For You, Deayton told viewers: ‘Do not adjust your set. My face really is this red.’
He was teased mercilessly about it on air by panellists Paul Merton and Ian Hislop, with the former unveiling a T-shirt with the News of the World’s ‘Deayton’s sex romp with vice girl’ front page emblazoned across it.
Deayton was reported to have privately thanked them afterwards ‘for making something funny out of something so unfunny’.
He appeared in another show later in 2002 after he appeared in the headlines again. And in October that year, he was sacked from the show by BBC executives at Hat Trick Productions, who claimed at the time the scandal was making his role as host a topical satire programme ‘untenable’.
Indeed, Mulville said: ‘We tried to lurch on but I could see it was becoming more and more uncomfortable because . . . the host needs not to be the main story on the show. Otherwise, you lose your comic platform, your authority.’
Mulville said he realised Deayton had to go when he was taunted by Christine Hamilton in an episode. Deayton had called Christine’s husband Neil ‘the disgraced former MP’ and she shot back, ‘If he’s disgraced, then what are you?’
‘We realised we just couldn’t go on like this for the show to survive,’ Mulville said.
Jimmy Mulville (pictured) revealed that Deayton travelled to Italy after the allegations emerged in the News of the World following an interview with Martin, but he was convinced to come back to the UK and present the next show
While Mulville believes it would be good to have Deayton back as the show’s host, Hislop is less keen
While Mulville believes it would be good to have Deayton back as the show’s host, Hislop is less keen.
Speaking on the same Radio 4 show, he said: ‘I’m not really asked very often which guests should come on because usually I would say, ‘Oh, God no. I hate him, her, them. Can we not have them?’ And I’m ignored. So if he appears, it would be nothing to do with me.’
Discussing Deayton’s firing, Hislop said: ‘It was incredibly difficult. I liked Angus and I thought he was a very, very good host.
‘It was certainly my job and our job as a programme to apply the same standards to him that we would have done to anyone else, which we did.’
Deayton said last year he has declined twice to guest host the show.
‘It didn’t get as far as discussing fees. I wouldn’t consider going back,’ Deayton said at the time.
Deayton split with his partner Lise Mayer in 2015, 13 years after it was revealed he had allegedly cheated on her with a prostitute while she was pregnant with their son Isaac.
His ex-mistress, Stacey Herbert, said they would have sex behind his partner’s back when they were holiday in Italy. Lise was six months pregnant at the time.
Following his dismissal from Have I Got News For You, Angus managed to build his career back up as an actor in shows such as Nighty Night, Pramface and Waterloo Road.
He later talked about his infidelities to the Guardian in 2012, saying: ‘No one is in my relationship, so they can’t make judgments about my relationship. There was one two-night stand, and there was an affair.
‘Well, I don’t think that’s completely unheard of, either in the realms of relationships, or indeed television presenters. There are many who have done as much, if not worse.’