Steve Wright's crime was getting too old so BBC bosses discarded him, says Carole Malone

Steve Wright – one of our greatest-ever broadcasters – is dead.

One newspaper claimed he died of a broken heart after being dumped by the BBC after 24 years presenting one of Radio’s 2 most successful shows.

That particular claim seems like an exaggeration. However, what isn’t an exaggeration is Steve’s devastation at being kicked out by the Corporation he had served so loyally for so long.

He never got over it say friends. Quite simply his show was his life. One of his former colleagues, Liz Kershaw (who was also “let go” after 20 years at the Beeb) said he was treated as if he was dispensable just “like a tin of beans”.

How odd that a Corporation that’s forever talking about people’s mental health wasn’t aware of Steve’s pain. Did BBC bosses ever for a second consider that he might have issues as a result of his sacking? Did they ever wonder if their shabby treatment of him caused problems? Did they offer him support? Because they knew him and they knew his afternoon show was literally his life – and they took it away.

Had he suddenly become a bad broadcaster we might all have accepted why they got rid of him. But he was as brilliant and as popular as he’d always been. However his crime, like so many others at Radio 2, was that he’d got old and so he was put out to pasture like an old horse.

But what’s enraged people this week is the fact that the woman who fired him, Radio 2 boss, Helen Thomas, put out some obsequious tribute telling us all that Steve had actually been her mentor (shame on her for sacking him then). “Steve was the first presenter I ever produced,” she said. "I remember the pure amazement I felt sitting opposite this legendary broadcaster.”

I grew up with Steve Wright. I loved him because he was funny and smart and innovative. He had a passion for trivia and bad jokes. And he was also a tiny bit crazy which we all loved.

I wonder as Helen Thomas climbed the greasy pole into management if she ever actually listened to Steve’s shows or did she just look at the age on his contract and think – Nah too old. He’s got to go.

Uninspired people like Thomas tinker with shows for tinkering’s sake. They feel they have to make their mark and so they trash something successful that someone else has built up.

People like her are obsessed with youth and wokery - not the quality of the broadcasting, not the ratings, not the people who actually listen to the station. So thick, so out of touch with their audiences are they that they don’t realise young people would rather stick pins in their eyes than tune into Radio 2 - especially when they replace legends like Ken Bruce and Steve Wright and with dreary minnows like Vernon Kay and Scott Mills (the Radio 1 DJ who took over from Steve).

More than six and a quarter million people tuned into Steve Wright every day. When he left half a million people immediately tuned out. When Ken Bruce left one million people left with him. When Zoe Ball took over from Chris Evans ratings plummeted. What is wrong with youth-obsessed execs like Thomas who see something good and want to destroy it?

I listened to an interview with this self-satisfied hypocrite after she sacked Steve Wright and it sounded to me like even she wasn’t convinced by her own feeble reasons for getting rid of him.

She’d replaced a fantastically popular showman who had intelligence and flair with a dreary Radio 1 DJ who just played dance music to people who didn’t want to hear it. And even though ratings are hugely on the slide under her leadership she seems to think that’s OK because she’s bringing in “change.”

No one minds change Helen luv as long as you change it with a show that’s of equal quality. And I’m afraid Scott Mills doesn’t come close.

Incredible that this woman on £200,000 plus a year still has a job after losing Radio 2 so many listeners. How it is at the BBC you can make a pig’s ear of your job yet you keep getting paid the vast salary and building up your obscene pension pot.

Oh hang on you can do that - because we, the licence payers, are footing the bill.

But after her oily, contrived tribute to Steve this week – which as one critic said provoked “genuine disgust” among many BBC staffers - maybe the suits at the Corporation should give Ms Thomas a taste of her own medicine – and sack her.

At least she’d be getting sacked because she’s bad at her job not because she had the audacity to get old.

Rest In Peace Steve!!!!