£100,000 pay-off for Evans

Chris Evans has been given a £100,000 pay-off by Channel 4 after a series of flops.

The station has given the former DJ a 'kill fee' to drop a show it ordered last year before it gets made.

Only 18 months ago the 36-year-old former Big Breakfast host returned to TV after a two-year break.

But at C4's spring launch yesterday it emerged that the only show Evans had left in development - a £1million series similar to parts of The Big Breakfast and provisionally called From Your Living Room - had been canned.

Two years ago, Evans's company UMTV signed a two-programme deal with C4, starting with the with big-budget dating show Boys and Girls fronted by Vernon Kaye. But that was a ratings disaster and was dropped after one series.

A C4 insider said the 'kill fee' for From Your Living Room was six figures. And C4 director of programmes Kevin Lygo said: 'We are not making anything with Chris Evans at the moment though we will listen when he has something else to say in the future.'

The move is a blow to Evans following the recent axing of another UMTV show, Terry Wogan and Gaby Roslin's £6million chat show on Channel Five.

It was the second of his shows to be axed in less than a year. Live With Christian O'Connell was abandoned after only one series.

Friends say Evans now plans to return to presenting, on radio and then TV.