HD gets out of bed nowadays for less than that, though he does have a decent pension.
Pre NATS I remember the Scilly islands with great fondness... first visit was Bryher when as a young officer scrote in basic flying training I spent a weekend team building exercise building roads and sea defences (and getting horrendously drunk in Hells Bay hotel).
Jump forward a couple of years, flying a Lynx off Illustrious on a 'Long Range Encounter Exercise' (yeah, right... why did we turn right towards land instead of left to the Atlantic??!!) and landing on St Marys which just happened to pop up on radar as a 'target of interest'. The fact we were loaded up with maintainers in the back and we were all carrying civvy's seemed to pass Commander Airs attention when we lifted from the deck (more likely he knew exactly what we were up to).
A pint (of coke for aircrew) and a Pasty later and a quick tour of the tower before returning.
Maybe not a huge pay packet but the Islands are a gem in Britain and I can think of worse places to work as an ATCO.
If money is all you are interested in, then you are missing out on a lot of things in life
Edited to add,
OTB were you SATCO circa 1993? If so we might have met when I flew in on the 'jolly' sorry LREX
