Former BBC presenter Huw Edwards has subtly weighed in on Scott Mills’ sacking over allegations surrounding his ‘personal conduct’.
Mills was reportedly questioned over ‘allegations of serious sexual offences over a teenage boy’ in 2016, although no charges were brought.
The Radio 2 Breakfast Show host was abruptly fired, having signed off the radio last week with the promise to ‘see you tomorrow’.
Friends claim they have been unable to reach Mills, 53, since the news broke, and he has yet to make a public statement.
Edwards, 64, faced a similar scandal in 2023 when he was suspended from the BBC after reports he had paid a 17-year-old boy for explicit images.
While he has not spoken publicly in support of Mills, he liked a LinkedIn post about ‘reputational problems’.
The post from Lauren Beeching, a crisis management PR, read: ‘The update around Scott Mills leaving the BBC is a good example of how organisations manage risk, and how that can unintentionally create a second reputational problem.
‘The BBC said he is “no longer contracted” and referenced “allegations about personal conduct”, while declining to comment further. From a legal and corporate perspective, that is entirely understandable.
‘The BBC is publicly funded, heavily scrutinised, and likely navigating legal advice, internal process, confidentiality, and duty of care all at once.
‘The difficulty is that “personal conduct” is so broad it tells the public almost nothing. It could refer to a wide range of issues, some serious, some not, but once that wording is out there, people start filling in the gaps themselves.
‘That is where things shift. The more extreme interpretations tend to travel faster, and very quickly speculation becomes more damaging than the statement itself.’
She wrote that for the person in question, it’s an ‘atrocious position to be in’, noting it was ‘stressful enough’ to lose a job but losing it in the public eye was worse.
‘Losing it publicly, while people try to work out what you may have done, is another level entirely,’ Beeching wrote.
‘At the same time, he may not be free to say much either. And that is the part people often miss. The silence is not always avoidance, it is often constraint. But in the gap between what can be said and what people want to know, the narrative rarely waits for permission.’
Edwards faced months of speculation over his suspension and what exactly he had been accused of.
He formally resigned from the BBC in April 2024, after he was arrested, and was later handed a six-month jail sentence suspended for two years after admitting to three charges of making indecent images of children.
He issued a guilty plea at Westminster Magistrates’ Court after convicted paedophile Alex Williams sent him illegal images on WhatsApp.
As well as completing a sex offender programme, he has now been placed on the registry for seven years, which means he has to notify police of his whereabouts.
Edwards’ story has recently been made into a Channel 5 series starring Martin Clunes, which he criticised for not ‘checking’ with him about the ‘truth’.
Information surrounding Mills’ firing is minimal but reportedly linked to a 2016 police investigation into historic incidents from 1997 and 2000.
According to a police spokesperson, a man in his 40s was questioned by police under caution in July 2018, but it did not result in any charges.
The Telegraph claimed that the broadcaster was made aware of allegations surrounding alleged misconduct in May 2025 but Metro understands this was a separate matter.
In a statement to Metro, the BBC said: ‘We received a press query in 2025 which included limited information. This should have been followed up and we should have asked further questions.
‘We apologise for this and will look into why this did not happen.
‘More broadly, we would always urge anyone who has concerns or information to raise it with us.’
Mills was one of the highest-paid presenters at the BBC at the time of his firing, earning £315,000 to £319,999 in 2025 after replacing Zoe Ball on the Radio 2 Breakfast Show.
Metro has reached out to Edwards’ team for comment.
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