GB News ‘Axes’ Dan Wootton After Fox Storm and Catfish Scandal: The Full Story

Dan Wootton needs a “miracle” to save his £600,000-a-year job as GB News’ star presenter as owner Sir Paul Marshall seeks to “detoxify” the brand as he bids for the Daily Telegraph, Byline Times can exclusively report.

Wootton – whose private and professional conduct has been the subject of a series of exposés by this newspaper – was informed on Friday that his services are unlikely to be required at the station again, alongside those of actor-turned activist Laurence Fox.

The pair are at the centre of a misogyny backlash after Fox staged a sexist rant denigrating journalist Ava Evans on Tuesday live on Dan Wootton Tonight while the host laughed along, attracting some 7,300 viewer complaints to regulator Ofcom.

GB News is also cutting ties with a third broadcaster – Calvin Robinson, who was a regular face on Wootton’s show – and is reviewing the employment of a number of other employees ahead of a further Byline Times investigation to be published tomorrow.

And last night a GB News editorial source told this newspaper: “Dan Wootton has left the building and a lot of people are relieved.

“There has been anger and disappointment about all the negative attention. Good journalists have been questioning their futures at the channel. Dan’s face was left off a big promotion last week. It will be a miracle if he’s seen here again.”

The absence of 40-year-old Wootton has rocked the network he joined as a founding host two years and three months ago, and which Robinson on Friday credited him as being “significant” to the “building” of through his influence on recruitment both “behind the cameras as well as on-screen talent”.

While Wootton smiled through a public appearance on Friday night at Westminster’s Central Hall, this newspaper can reveal that he is privately considering, following the loss on Thursday of his £250,000-a-year column for MailOnline, quitting the UK to return to his native New Zealand.

A source close to the situation told Byline Times: “It has been made clear to Dan that he will not be broadcasting again on GB News any time soon, just as he will not be writing for MailOnline. Right now, he feels as if he might prefer just to go back to Wellington to be near family.”

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The Marshall Plan

Although the crunch for Wootton at GB News may have seemed to come swiftly following the Ava Evans incident – in which he smirked as Fox branded Evans a “little woman” and asked “who’d want to shag that?” – Byline Times can reveal that GB News’ founding stakeholder Sir Paul Marshall has been losing patience with the journalist for at least two months.

The potential for harm to the brand became obvious when this newspaper unmasked Wootton in July as the hidden controller of the online pseudonyms ‘Martin Branning’ and ‘Maria Joseph’ – two catfishing identities used to fraudulently obtain compromising digital sexual material from scores of men over at least a 10-year period, and in some cases blackmail them.

In addition, Byline Times handed a dossier of evidence outlining some of its findings about Wootton’s personal behaviour to the Metropolitan Police on 20 June. We will be updating it for detectives shortly as our investigation into Wootton continues.

When on 18 July Wootton used his GB News platform to launch personal attacks on this newspaper, its journalists and a former partner – while admitting to “past errors of judgement”, denying criminal behaviour, but not to being or being connected to ‘Branning’ and ‘Joseph’ – the network’s ownership took notice.

Not only did it place Wootton in breach of his employer’s own Editorial Charter, which outlaws ad hominem attacks on individuals, it highlighted a tabloid presenting style known to be disliked by 64-year-old Sir Paul, who despite having no control over GB News’ output, holds the purse strings on an asset that lost around £28.3 million in the last accounting period, according to new analysis by Byline Times.

In addition, the catfishing scandal emerged as Sir Paul was hiring bankers from Moelis to advise on a £600 million takeover proposal for the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph, the acquisition of which would make him a “kingmaker” of the British Conservative Party – a position that for the first time in decades is up for grabs after the semi-retirement of 92-year-old Rupert Murdoch as the UK’s pre-eminent media baron.

A well-positioned source in the finance world told Byline Times: “Paul has been watching the fall-out around Wootton from the outset somewhat askance. He is fully across the financial health of the company, but has even greater interest in its political credibility.

“Paul has never been comfortable with Wootton’s extreme tabloid style. There has been a conversation around improving the presenting personnel for a couple of months.

“In particular, Paul disliked Wootton’s habit of staging personal attacks. They are short-sighted and have huge capacity to backfire – as has been demonstrated perfectly with the Ava Evans incident.

“There was a concern that Wootton’s antics were making GB News a parody of the free speech channel it was intended to be. It sat very poorly with the original vision to set a credible alternative tone for the right-of-centre political conversation in the UK. Wootton’s future there has been in question for a lot longer than many people, even he, might have believed.”