Tarrant lie-in worth £430,000

Full details of the extraordinary deal which persuaded Chris Tarrant to stay with the Breakfast Show on Capital Radio emerged today.

Capital has agreed to keep paying his £1.3 million annual salary but allow him to start work two hours later every day.

Although Tarrant's new deal will pay him the same as his previous contract, the two-hour lie-in means he will be working less, so his salary per hour has risen from £833 to £1,250.

It would be the equivalent of a £430,000 pay rise if he worked the extra two hours a day.

From January, Tarrant will be on air from 7.30am. The new deal, which also sees Tarrant taking a sixweek sabbatical, was thrashed out by desperate Capital Radio bosses after weeks of consistent threats by the 55-year-old to quit the job he has done for 15 years.

Tarrant gets four hours' sleep a night between filming Who Wants To Be A Millionaire in the evening and his radio breakfast show.

Only two days ago Tarrant said he was definitely packing in his Capital job in "a couple of months". He told TV interviewer Frank Skinner: "I want to leave, genuinely. I love Capital and I love the people. But I have got out of bed at 5am for the last 15 years.

"We are now at the stage where I really want to have some time off."

A Breakfast Show source said today: "Chris is a very valuable asset. To keep him, Capital has decided to boost investment in the show and give him fewer hours."