The story goes that convicted fraudster and corporate bully-of-note Gerald Ronson had a singular way of keeping in touch with his management team. He would isolate a target and contrive a scenario where just the two were together – a privileged ride in GR’s limo or in a lift, for example. Allowing not even seconds for the ‘interviewee’ to gain some composure and without any preamble whatsoever, Ronson would turn his gimlet stare into the eyes of his interlocutor and say simply, “What are you doing with my money?”
It did tend to focus the attention somewhat.
In my fantasy, I am stuck in a lift with Chris Patten. I turn my GR stare on him and pop the question.
According to a report in last Wednesday’s Times we licence-fee payers will not require to see that much of the evidence obtained by the BBC enquiry into the Jimmy Savile disgrace, despite it having cost a few hundred grand of our money to have got it. Among the contents apparently redacted are interviews with former directors-general Mark Thompson and George Entwistle, as well as Helen Boaden, head of BBC News, and her deputy, Steve Mitchell.
Further, the 200k bill is likely to grow considerably owing to the fact that as many as 40 BBC witnesses are receiving up to £50,000 each for legal advice over their evidence.
Among journalists who have spotted and written about Patten’s unsuitability for his position as chairman of the BBC Trust are Tim Walker and Peter Oborne and it makes for interesting reading.
A perception of bloated entitlement and self-serving arrogance already mires the BBC’s leadership on several levels. It’s not helped by Patten’s sarcasm in reply to a perfectly reasonable request by a Commons committee for a breakdown of the time Patten spends on BBC work relative to his nine other paid and unpaid jobs.
“Do you want to know my toilet habits?” responded my noble lord. Ha-ha! How drole! And possibly owing to the Yorkshire accent of the committee member in question Philip Davies, Patten likely thought him a bit of a dullard. And so, when Davies queried the BBC’s £223,000 payment to a headhunter for George Entwistle’s recruitment, saying, “You have spent a fortune recruiting somebody who was under your nose. Then you spend a fortune paying him off because [he] wasn’t up to the job. Are you going to take responsibility for that?” and the ‘Prissy’ Patten replied with more sarcasm, “I am not sure this Socratic dialogue is getting us very far”, his lordship must have thought to himself, What uncommon fine larks to throw a quote he won’t understand.
Patten misses the point on all sorts of levels – he and the BBC board remain answerable to parliament; at the best of times it is not discretionary for the BBC Trust to decide the definition of transparency as per the BBC Charter… in bad times it’s insanity to do so; this level of insensitivity in any matter to do with Savile shows a crass inability to grasp anything.
Just because Davies hails from the North and began his working life in a bookies’ and then as a cashier at ASDA doesn’t entitle Priss to presume him an arsehole. Davies knows about value for money, as do a lot of the people in his West Yorkshire constituency and the questions are perfectly reasonable. But if it comes down to it Patten might get a good kicking in the playground at breaktime.
Or if they’re stuck in a lift together, I hope the honourable member for Shipley turns a Gerald Ronson stare and pops the question I, for one, am dying to ask of the BBC myself.