Disgraced BBC presenter Huw Edwards faces being stripped of seven Bafta awards following his child sex abuse image conviction, the Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Bosses at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts last night branded Edwards’ crimes ‘abhorrent’ and disclosed they are ‘reviewing’ a slew of awards won by the veteran broadcaster over 15 years.
It comes as the BBC faced mounting calls to claw back the £200,000 it paid the 62-year-old between his arrest last November and resignation in April.
One former governor voiced outrage that the BBC paid Edwards such a huge sum after his arrest, accusing it of ‘bumbling bad management’.
‘I don’t understand why they continued to pay him. Possibly because senior managers are so grossly overpaid they didn’t notice.’
Broadcaster Huw Edwards leaves Westminster Magistrates’ Court on July 31, 2024 in London, England. Veteran News Reader Huw Edwards pleaded guilty to three counts of making indecent pictures of children between 2020 and 2022, 37 images were shared on WhatsApp
Huw Edwards poses with BAFTA award in 2003. He faces being stripped of seven Bafta awards following his child sex abuse image conviction, the Mail on Sunday can reveal. Edwards was arrested in November 2023
Edwards was the BBC’s Ten O’clock News anchor and was chosen to announce the death of HM Queen Elizabeth II to the nation
It came as the MoS can reveal:
- An ex-BBC employee said it was ‘well known’ among staff in Cardiff, where Edwards often worked, that the presenter sent inappropriate messages to young men.
- Insiders claim Edwards held a secret showdown meeting with a senior BBC boss in Cardiff five months after his arrest. The Corporation last night denied the claim.
- The paedophile who sent him indecent pictures of children has been suspended from his job as a manager at a Wickes DIY store.
The BBC was plunged into crisis last week after Edwards pleaded guilty to multiple counts of possessing indecent images of children, including one as young as seven years old.
News broadcaster Huw Edwards poses in the Awards Room with the News Coverage Award for coverage of the July 7, 2005
Seven of the 41 images sent to Edwards by Alex Williams, 25, of Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales, were classed as the most serious type – known as category A.
There were questions this weekend over a flat listed in court documents as Edwards’ new address, where he is believed to have moved after splitting from his wife Vicky and leaving the family home in Dulwich, south London.
A woman who answered the door at the flat in Wandsworth, south-west London, owned by a couple in Australia, told the MoS: ‘He doesn’t live here. He has never lived here.’ As one of the nation’s most respected broadcasters, Edwards won multiple awards, including in his native Wales where he regularly hosted high-profile politics and history programmes.
Bafta Cymru – the Welsh branch of Bafta – recognised his presenting skills with seven awards between 2002 and 2017. The accolades included for presenting an hour-long documentary in 2017 on the 1966 Aberfan disaster and The Story of Wales, a major television history of the country, in 2013.
He also shared with other BBC colleagues UK-wide Bafta awards for the coverage of the 2012 royal wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton, the 2005 London bombings and the 2004 Madrid bombings.
Asked whether Edwards’ individual awards would now be removed, a Bafta spokesman said: ‘Like everyone in the industry and country we were shocked by the news this week. Given the seriousness of this abhorrent crime, we are reviewing.’
Media lawyer Mark Stephens said Bafta will have to strip Edwards of his awards: ‘His reputation has been ruined. There is no way back. Bafta will not want any association with this at all.’
Professor Jonathan Shalit, a top showbusiness agent, said Edwards should ‘most certainly have the Baftas rescinded’, adding: ‘A Bafta is the highest accolade that can be awarded to the creative titans of television and film.
‘It has been received by some of the great names on the planet. It would be entirely inappropriate and a massive smirch on recipients past and future to be in the same company as Edwards.’
Edwards’ downfall began last July when it was alleged he had paid £35,000 to a teenager for explicit pictures. The individual, now 21 but 17 when Edwards first allegedly started paying for pictures, this weekend said he felt ‘groomed’ by the disgraced newsreader. Edwards, whose annual salary was £475,000, was suspended by the BBC and then arrested in November 2023 on suspicion of completely separate allegations related to child abuse images, although news of the arrest came to light only last week.
BBC Director General Tim Davie revealed he and other top bosses knew about the arrest, including ‘the category of the potential offences’. The Corporation was, however, asked by police to keep the arrest ‘confidential’, he said.
Edwards appeared in Westminster Magistrate Court this week where he admitted to having indecent images of children as young as seven after being sent them on WhatsApp
Court artist drawing of Edwards. The veteran news broadcaster pleading guilty to three counts of making indecent images of children, between December 2020 and August 2022 on Wednesday
Before the scandal broke last year, Edwards was one of the BBC’s most famous stars where he covered major events for BBC News including the Queen’s death and King Charles’s coronation (pictured: Edwards on the day the Queen died)
Claims emerged last night that Edwards attended a heated meeting with a senior boss at the BBC’s Cardiff headquarters on March 26 – four months after his arrest.
One insider, who claimed to have witnessed the meeting, said the presenter was ‘ranting and raving and shaking his fists’.
A second well-placed source said: ‘Word went round that Edwards was in the building and in one of the fourth-floor management suites. People couldn’t resist going to have a nose and he could be seen through the large glass windows.’
However, a spokesman last night said the BBC ‘do not recognise any such meeting taking place’, adding the manager said to be involved has denied ever meeting Edwards.
One former BBC employee said Edwards was known to bombard young men with messages when he visited Cardiff to front programmes for BBC Wales. ‘It’s very well known in Cardiff that he was messaging people. Among friends, pretty much everyone has had a message from Huw Edwards.’
Other ex-colleagues expressed shock at his conviction. ‘I worked closely with Huw, but I had no inkling about any of this,’ said one. ‘He sometimes spoke of his depression, but that was it. I’m absolutely shocked by what I have heard this week. I knew his wife, and I feel bad for her and the family.’
The MoS last week established that Williams, a former student at Cardiff Metropolitan University, works in the city as a manager at Wickes. He was suspended on Thursday after it was revealed he pleaded guilty to seven offences related to possessing and distributing indecent images and given a 12-month suspended jail term in March. It is understood neither his employer or colleagues had any idea of his crimes. A Wickes spokesman said: ‘We can confirm an individual has been suspended.’
Additional reporting: Isaac Crowson and Tom Bedford