In his programs for BNNVARA, Tim Hofman always fights against grabs and high earners, but isn’t he actually part of that too? “I am an overpaid civil servant,” he says.
It always disturbs Tim Hofman immensely when people with a low or middle income are the victims of political policy or large commercial companies. For example, yesterday in Beau van Erven Dorens’ talk show, he ranted about the higher energy prices and shopping at Albert Heijn, which is becoming more and more expensive.
Overpaid civil servant
Tim may be involved with people from these income groups, but they are certainly not in his circles† No one is bothered by higher heating costs. “No, not in my immediate environment, but I do see that it happens in environments, for example on Twitter,” he says at Beau†
He continues: “People who can no longer pay their energy bill or who have a lot of trouble with it. What I find very difficult to see is – and I’m not one of them, because I’m an overpaid civil servant who is also nibbling; no, it just so happens – that people with average wallets will lose out on this.”
A ton a year?
Tim therefore considers himself an ‘overpaid civil servant’, but how much does he actually get from BNNVARA? His relatively talentless colleague Emma Wortelboer is known to grab 70,000 euros from the broadcaster, so a presenter who brings about as much as Tim will probably be above that. Or does he use the SP model and does he partially relinquish his salary?
Until now, Tim has always kept quiet about his salary. At the beginning of 2018, he only said that he does not earn as much as his broadcasting colleague Astrid Joosten, who then revealed that she takes 175 thousand euros a year. “Well, not that much,” said the presenter. On top of his TV salary, there are also those lucrative schnabbels, for example for the Bunq bank.
Angry at Shell boss
Back to the rising prices: Tim thinks it is unacceptable that people with a low or average income should be the victims of this. “I don’t see an Ahold shareholder anywhere that is going to contribute euros. If you see what Shell has in the bank, it is actually ridiculous that a customer should pay for this again.”
He says: “Somewhere we are having the conversation in the wrong way. That the customer and the supplier have to cut corners. Then you immediately start giving tips like: ‘Holy shit, your bread is 50 cents more expensive.’”
‘What a good point’
All those rich bobo’s should hand in, Tim barks. “Somewhere on an island there’s a guy who runs a fund somewhere and that’s f*cking… If you look at Ahold and last year’s profits and how hard it is for shareholders to say, ‘Maybe the profit margin will be 4 percent in instead of 4.2 percent.’ Then the whole mess breaks out.”
“What a good point you make there!”, responds Beau van Erven Dorens, who in 2017 more or less ruled out moving to public broadcasting for a meager two hundred thousand: “It must be a damn fun program, I want to the public broadcaster will come to work under the beaming norm.”