So, quite a relief to discover that I have a cold. To be honest, the way I was feeling yesterday I did begin to wonder if I was suffering from some sort of post-house moving depression and was quite concerned that I wouldn't shake it off too easily. However, it's just a cold that was clearly looming so today, here it is, out in the open for all to see. So while I feel coldy in body, at least I feel better in the head.
It's always a comfort, I find, when one is feeling under the weather, to look at, say, another individual and to know for sure that however bad one feels, it doesn't even come near whatever that person is enduring. And that's a comfort I've solely derived from BBC Director General George Entwistle, who, unless you're living on Mars, will have noticed is really in the merde today over the Jimmy Savile allegations.
A few weeks back when the Savile stuff began to hit the airwaves, Rod Liddle, former editor of R4 Today Programme, wrote in his Sunday Times column that he always enjoyed watching the BBC "stab itself to death with its own penis". Or something like that anyway. It was a phrase that resonated with me and has ultimately proved utterly accuate as we observe this current mess.
I must declare an interest at this stage; I am a sometime employee of BBC News, on occasion gladly taking its shilling for an honest day's toil on the newsdesk or out and about interviewing folk for TV and radio. Some years ago I used to be what they call a 'lifer'; a member of BBC staff who lives and breathes the organisation and is expected to be there until they drop, or survive just long enough to draw the still-quite-generous pension of the faithful worker-bee. However dear reader, I escaped, and am now able to stand back and observe the various goings-on with a mixture of empathy and horror, rather like the parent who stands just out of sight while their offspring plays with their dear little friends and witnessing him or her declare loudly, as they chuck the dolly into the corner "you look after it, I'm off to a party".
In fact it was at the very height of my being a dedicated lifer that the BBC was embroiled in a very similar scandal, only that one involved the alleged sexing up of WMD rather than the touching up of very young children. OK there were no under-age innocents involved in the Dr David Kelly/Andrew Gilligan debacle, to my knowledge everyone was a grown-up (although some of the behaviour witnessed made that hard to believe) and fully answerable for their actions. Although to be fair, one of the main protagonists did end up dead, in mysterious circumstances in an Oxfordshire woodland, so there are some parallels in that Kelly's answers went with him to the grave as did Savile's.
But it was the same, slow, stilted, strangulated, disjointed response from BBC management that tied the whole corporation up in knots and ultimately brought about the downfall of the then DG, a certain Greg Dyke, who in my opinion was one of the best things that had happened in years. Dyke, rather like George Entwistle has done with Newsnight editor Peter Rippon, put his trust in the person at the centre of the story, in that case it was reporter Andrew Gilligan, and effectively bet the whole farm on the reliability of that person's judgement and the accuracy of their statement in response to the unravelling crisis.
For all my insider knowledge of the BBC and in particular, the internicine workings of the newsroom and all the diverse news programmes it feeds, I cannot be certain that deliberate obfuscation is at work here. The BBC is huge and complex and no one individual, however switched on, can ever possibly know every story that's being covered, or second guess the impact those stories will have.
However, the questions that remain unanswered are: did George Entwistle in his previous role as Head of Vision realise the seriousness of the evidence that Newsnight had uncovered as regards Jimmy Savile's disgusting ways? If he did, then why on earth did he let the nauseating Christmas tribute programme go out when he knew that these allegations existed on camera from verifiable witnesses? Also why was that Newsnight investigation never broadcast? I know the reporter, Liz MacKean from years back and she is a completely credible journalist with top-notch skills and a brilliant track record. If she thought the story stood up, then it stood up.
Those questions, in my mind, are crucial and I hope the Select Committee MPs get to the crux of the issue today. I've not yet watched the Panorama that went out last night. I think I might just pop off and watch it now over a rather alarmingly large pile of ironing that's morphed up out of nowhere.
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