. Eric the Unread links to a rather delightful spot of Greg Dyke bashing by way of a review of Dyke’s new book by Charles Moore in The Telegraph*. Here are a few snippets for your edification – the first four are hilarious, the last one something that we at BBBC can attest to:
When he arrived at the BBC, Greg wanted to change the culture. He learnt how to do this when he ran LWT from 1990. There, his first act was to “put up an enormous picture of me in reception at our building on the South Bank”: he wanted to be “accessible, open, and friendly”.
When he lost control of LWT, he became very rich through the sale of his shares: “It was a truly miserable time… I also learnt to live with suddenly being rich.” Things got worse at the BBC. He had to sell lots of shares and to scrape by on less than £500,000 a year. Luckily, though, thousands of staff came to love him.
“Three weeks to the day” after Greg had been pushed out, he visited Robben Island, the place in South Africa where Nelson Mandela had been imprisoned, and found it “an incredibly emotional experience”. As he went round, “…my tears flowed quietly, tears for what had happened on this horrible island, but also tears for what had happened to me in those three days in January”. Luckily, he says, he eventually achieved some perspective, and realised that what had happened to him was “insignificant in comparison”.
According to Greg Dyke, his book has “three themes: broadcasting, politics and me”. The reader, however, may find the first two topics rather thinly covered. Greg is enormously excited by the story of himself.
During, before and after the Iraq war, the BBC maintained neither impartiality nor accuracy. The assumption behind almost all its coverage was that the war was wrong. It therefore felt that it did not need to check the details of stories whose heart, as it saw it, was in the right place.
A classic goring! Do read the whole review if you have time.
* registration sometimes required – see www.bugmenot.com if need be.
Off topic
Gary Richardson, Today’s otherwise excellent sports commentator stated Monday 20 September, in a moment of excitement “Europe’s biggest win in the 77 year history of the Ryder Cup.”
But of course “Europe” has only participated in the event for the last 25 years.
If Blair had any sense he would’ve called that tricky European constitution referendum for the day after our victory. There’s nothing like spanking the Yanks for instilling a bit of pan-continental solidarity.
Whilst we’re OT but on the topic of sport I’ve noticed that the BBC’s short lived ‘experiment’ with boxing appears to have pretty much died. Given the government’s admirable initiative to encourage kids to take up the sport as an antidote to smashing up bus stops and mugging old ladies, I’d have thought that our public broadcaster might have lent a hand by publicising some top fighters.
This presumably isn’t due to public apathy given the spectacular viewing figures that Amir Khan got in the Olympics, so I have a horrible suspicion that it’s down to some politically correct cretin in the BBC’s sports department deciding that we should be watching nice games like tennis instead.
On topic – doesn’t a review of Greg Dyke’s book by Charles Moore have all the impartial relevance of a review of Telegraph editorials by George Galloway.
Not un-entertaining but not indicative in any way of the rights and wrongs of the issues in question.
Gerald – I know that Mr Kilroy-Silk and his merry band of pranksters would like to believe the UK and Ireland aren’t in Europe, but actually they are…
Greg Dyke is an idiot. I challenged him when he was on Radio 5 the other week spouting his bile. Simon Mayo couldn’t get his tongue any further up his butt if he shoved it up there with a broom handle. I said the BBC was full of left wingers. Dyke didn’t deny it but said it was more of a metropolitan lean. I take it he means Islington left?
“Metropolitan lean”, you don’t say!
The BBC’s stance on multiculturalism (very New Labourish indeed) is so one-sided as to beggar belief.
The traditional Left, that which fought for the working classes, has been replaced by a posh metropolitan elite, which prefers “ethnics”, homo and metrosexuals (who are more politically amenable and PC).
The working man and woman, as far as the Metropolitan Left are concerned, can go to hell.
They had to do it Zevilyn. Once the working class got too comfy and prosperous under capitalism, they were no longer interested in what the left was selling. The left had to look elsewhere for support for their “great revolution” — that meant racial politicas, sexual politics, immigration politics, cultural politics. Ergo, the hideously elitist and assinine left of today. Way nastier and dumber than the old left, who at least knew what it was like to hold down a real job now and then.