Jonathan Ross: Negative press drove me to quit BBC

Jonathan Ross said the "sheer volume of negative press" he was attracting to the BBC was one of the reasons he quit the corporation.

The presenter's time at the BBC was marked by controversy and he left his BBC1 chat show and Radio 2 programme this year.

He said: "To be honest it was the sheer volume of negative press I was receiving and that was being aimed at them via me so I thought it was best if I left."

Ross was suspended for 12 weeks without pay in 2008 after he and Russell Brand left obscene messages on Andrew Sach's answerphone which were broadcast on Brand's Radio 2 show.

He also came under fire for his salary, rumoured to be worth £18 million over three years, and also for a controversial interview with David Cameron on his Friday night chat show, where he asked the Tory leader whether he had ever had schoolboy sexual fantasies about former prime minister Margaret Thatcher.

In July it was announced Ross had signed a deal to present a chat show for ITV.

He has also indulged his life-long love for comics and signed up to produce a Vampire story for the magazine CLiNT.

Ross said it was "a gothic, sci-fi, noir page turner".

The first issue of the magazine, which went on sale today, also features a strip by another controversial funnyman, Frankie Boyle.

It is being launched by comic writer Mark Millar, whose Kick-Ass has been developed into a hit movie, scripted by Ross's wife Jane Goldman.
Millar said CLiNT was "The Eagle for the 21st Century".

He said: "I've worked on everything from Spider-Man comics to the Iron Man movie for Marvel in New York, but CLiNT really excites me.

"I think CLiNT has potential to make an enormous impact, bringing a new type of magazine to a new generation. It's edgy and irreverent, it'll be the kind of thing guys will be passing around lunch-halls and common rooms."