Next! Here was the BBC’s fourth director-general in a year to sit down in front of the Commons Culture Select Committee.
It has been a bit like watching an England batting collapse: Thompson (not exactly dismissed but he left the crease unhappily), Entwistle (stumps sent cartwheeling before he had barely taken his guard), acting DG Davey (not out) and now Hall. Could the new man stop the rot?
Tony Hall. LORD Hall. Now there’s a bit of heft. To be a parliamentarian helps when in front of a parliamentary hearing. They know the pace of the wicket. Is there a sense of what we used to call the fast bowlers’ union? Perhaps not, but it did subtly help the newcomer to have that peer’s title.
The MPs could not do that belittling thing they sometimes try by emphasising the ‘Mister’.
He began with a prepared statement necessitating dark-framed spectacles. These made him look like the late 1970s newscaster Kenneth Kendall.
One almost expected him to say: ‘And in other news, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Denis Healey, drove back from Heathrow airport...’
The specs were whipped off once he had finished his script. Are we maybe a little vain? A boyish countenance with occasional flashes of a smile which were more convincing than the grins of gaseous terror poor Entwistle used to pin on his bean. And how good, after stubbly Thompson, to have a DG who is clean-shaven.
Former Director-general Mark Thompson, who also faced the Select Committee, was not exactly dismissed but he left the crease unhappilySome of the trickiest moments concerned Lord Hall’s decision to keep former BBC News chief Helen Boaden in a top job, kerching-kerching. She has been parked at radio (head of). The MPs were not impressed.
Paul Farrelly (Lab, Newcastle-under-Lyme) had an awkward analogy about the likes of Boaden being ‘chiefs’ and lesser BBC mortals being ‘Indians’. Watch it, Paul, the race relations police will be after you.
Beside Hall, BBC chairman Lord Patten seemed to have lost a few ounces of bombastLord Hall said Beeb suits had suffered enough during the Jimmy Savile scandal. ‘The public humiliation was enough for those people – they had been through a period of huge discomfort,’ he said. Humiliation, it’s a good career move.
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A Thompson or Entwistle at this point would have started ab-dabbing ‘but, but, but’. Lord Hall listened pleasantly, heard Mr Bradshaw’s concern, and offered some gloopy assurance about how ‘outstanding’ Miss Boaden was. On that money, one should hope so!
Hall had age on his side – older than the committee’s sprats. Beside him, BBC chairman Lord Patten seemed to have lost a few ounces of bombast. Perhaps he trusts Hall more. Perhaps he owns him less.
Lord Hall defused a skilful bomb from Conor Burns (Con, Bournemouth W), who outed himself as a Thatcherite who actually supports the BBC.
‘I fear you may have damaged yourself and your mission’ with the Boaden decision, said Mr Burns. Lord Hall, employing the disguised caution of a circus lion tamer, said that he ‘understood’ Mr Burns’s words – but thought he was completely wrong.
He had ‘spent time’ with Miss Boaden and ‘talked to her’ (it was almost as if she was under sedation in intensive care). We should realise what ‘trauma’ (pronounced like ‘trousers’) the BBC had undergone. Hankies, Petunia.
As for the appointment of arch-Blairite James Purnell to some top executive position, Lord Hall affected paternal pride in the lad. ‘He’s hung his boots up at the door and left politics behind two or three years ago. I think he’s outstanding.’
A football manager talking about a teenage centre forward? No, this was the new DG of the incorrigibly Leftist Beeb, talking about a former Cabinet minister who was lined up to be David Miliband’s chief of staff had he become Labour Leader, but is now on a stonking BBC salary.
BBC journalists would treat this sort of claim with cackling scepticism. So should we.
