Jeremy Vine has said he is worried about the unnamed presenter at the heart of the BBC scandal’s state of mind and said he “needs to come forward".
Speaking on his Channel 5 show, Vine - who also hosts an afternoon show on BBC Radio 2 - said: “It’s his decision but he needs to come forward now, I think.
“I know his survival instinct has kicked in and I know he saw what happened to Phillip Schofield, but my God look at the damage to the BBC, look at the damage to his friends, to those falsely accused - and the longer he leaves it the worse it will be for him."
Vine is among high-profile media personalities who has been forced to publicly deny they are the person in question after being falsely accused on social media.
The unnamed presenter, who is suspended, has also been hit with allegations that they broke Covid lockdown rules to meet a 23-year-old from a dating app, and that they were abusive to another person in their early 20s he met on a dating app.
Vine said he thought “very carefully" before posting a tweet on Tuesday night urging the unnamed presenter to reveal himself.
He said: “I know the individual concerned. I am very worried about his state of mind and what this is doing to him.
"I haven’t spoken to him but I gather from somebody who has that he is described as angry and keen to play it long.
“Now to me that means that he wants to be anonymous for as long as possible, hoping that he can one day walk back into the building."
Vine said the unnamed BBC presenter “will have to answer" the allegations against him, and suggested the man will not be able to “remain anonymous for ever”.
He added: “What’s happening is all this stuff is aggregating with no response.
“Now, he must have a defence, he must have one. Maybe he’s going to say it’s all a misunderstanding? Well I assume it."
The 58-year-old told his programme that he was asked by his wife to wear a baseball cap at the weekend while attending a Bruce Springsteen concert to ensure his safety.
However, he also defended the BBC over the controversy, saying the corporation has “behaved with extraordinary decency”.
The Sun reported on Wednesday that a 23-year-old person has claimed the BBC presenter broke lockdown rules to meet them during the pandemic in February 2021.
The paper also reported an additional claim from another person saying the presenter “started a chat with a teen follower from his Instagram account” while the person was 17.
According to The Sun, the individual was 17 when the presenter contacted them "out of the blue".
The first allegation printed in The Sun reported a family’s claims the presenter had paid a teenager tens of thousands of pounds for sexually explicit images.
But the young person at the centre of the controversy rubbished that claim via a lawyer and said nothing “unlawful” or “inappropriate” happened.
However, the first person’s family stuck by their account and The Sun said it was “for the BBC to properly investigate”.
The corporation has been asked to pause its internal investigation into the allegations “while the police scope future work" following a meeting with the Metropolitan Police.
