Video: Brand's resignation statement

Jonathan Ross's future as Britain's best paid broadcaster hangs in the balance today after the BBC's governing board met to discuss prank phone calls made on Russell Brand's Radio 2 show.

Brand has already resigned from his regular presenting slot on the UK's most popular station over lewd voicemail messages left by him and Ross for the Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs. But Ross, who earns £6 million a year from the licence fee-funded BBC, is hanging on, although he has been suspended.

Mark Thompson, the BBC Director-General, held a four-hour meeting today with members of the BBC Trust at which Ross's fate was expected to be top of the agenda. But the fact remains that the segment of the show which caused offence was approved for broadcast by an as yet unnamed Radio 2 executive.

The Tories called today for a full Commons debate on the BBC's handling of the row after accusations of high-handedness.

The row is over part of Brand's show in which he and Ross telephoned Sachs, 78, and left messages for him after he failed to answer. At one part Ross announced jokingly that Brand had slept with Sachs's 23-year-old granddaughter.

Of the estimated 400,000 people who heard the segment, only two saw fit to complain to the BBC, one of them Sachs himself. But the story gained momentum after it was picked up in the weekend newspapers and the BBC today registered its 30,000th complaint.

The BBC says that it does not keep tallies of complaints made to it, but in terms of its recent history this row now ranks second only to the corporation's decision in 2005 to broadcast Jerry Springer the Opera, which prompted 55,0000 calls and letters of complaint after a campaign led by a Christian group angered by the show's obscene language.

As the BBC Trust met today, Theresa May, Shadow Leader of the House, used business questions to press for a full Commons debate on the row and the BBC's handling of it.

"There has been public outrage at the behaviour of Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand yet for several days the BBC seemed like a rabbit caught in the headlights, unable to act," Ms May told MPs.

"We need a debate in this House on the BBC’s handling of this incident because licence fee-payers have a right to know what went wrong and how similar incidents will be avoided in the future. "

The issue was also raised at a Downing Street press conference with Gordon Brown and the visiting German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, at which the Prime Minister repeated his comments from earlier in the week about the row. "I simply wanted to express the views of the general public that this was inappropriate and unacceptable behaviour on the part of leading personalities to whom many people look to as role models," he said. "I leave it at that."

After his suspension yesterday, Ross issued an abject apology for his "juvenile and thoughtless" actions., The BBC pulled the plug on his popular Friday night TV show just hours before it was due to be recorded, and decided to air the Keanu Reeves blockbuster Speed in its place.

In his resignation statement, Brand, a former heroin addict, paid tribute to Ross, calling him a "great broadcaster". He said that Ross had been "silly" but "was not malicious" and added that he was a "lovely, kind, gentle man who did something a little bit silly".

"We made a mistake, crossed the line, ... What we did was wrong," he said.

The pair's suspension - and news that the media regulator Ofcom was to investigate the row - was welcomed by Georgina Baillie, Sachs's granddaughter, who told The Sun: "I’m thrilled because justice has been done... Me and my granddad are both really happy because it could have damaged our reputation permanently."

In a bizarre twist to an already surreal saga, she amitted having a fling with Brand two years ago and told the newspaper how Brand, knowing that she was Sachs's granddaughter, deployed Manuel's most famous lines. She said that he pranced around the bedroom yelling "¿Que?" and "I know nothing!"

"The fact that my grandfather was Andrew Sachs clearly tickled Russell," said Ms Baillie, who is a member of a dance troop called the Satanic Sluts Xtreme. "But I never thought he’d use it to cause such a lot of damage."

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