Price To See You - To See You, Price

The whole of Britain has reacted with shock and sympathy to the news that Strictly Come Prancing host Bruce Forsyth may be bedridden for the rest of his life.

The announcement was made after it was suggested that the BBC may cut the 119-year-old veteran's salary from £900,000 to a paltry £400,000 in upcoming contract negotiations, prompting industry insiders to express their fears that Brucie could feel that the heavy workload of tottering about for a couple of hours while leering at Tess Daly is no longer worth his while.

"I wouldn't get out of bed for less than half a mill," said Vernon Kay, "And I don't have to use an expensive hoist. Brucie's a trouper, of course - he loves an audience almost as much as he loves himself - but he might just lose the will to live, and spend his twilight years staring obsessively at his own reflection on the ceiling, walls and floor of one of his many luxurious bedrooms."

The much-loved-by-himself star is only the latest to be reportedly facing a massive pay cut. Jeremy Clarkson is said to be aghast at the forbidding prospect of having to subsist on only 60% of his BBC salary, supplemented only by several hundred grand a year from News Corporation for ranting in the Sun and the Sunday Times and the occasional huge royalty cheque for his increasingly written-by-numbers books.

And Graham Norton is faced with the harrowing prospect of having to eat the sequins off his jacket in order to eke out his miserable existence.

"I know the public will be devastated to contemplate the stomach-churning impoverishment of their dearly-loved friends in the entertainment industry," said BBC director-general Mark Thompson. "But at the end of the day, somebody's got to cover the massive overheads of modern TV production techniques, such as moving the Casualty sets from Bristol down the road to Cardiff."

"How can I explain it in layman's terms?" he mused. "Basically, it all comes down to the simple fact that you should all be paying a damn sight more than £142.50 for quality programming like Strictly Come Prancing."