Diary – 29 January 2005

The Telegraph Group, for which I work, happens to use the same taxi firm as the BBC, and in the days when I was lucky enough to be driven to my office at Canary Wharf, I made friends with several of the firm’s regular drivers. In the course of our chats I couldn’t help learning something about the habits of some BBC executives — though these discreet drivers never, unfortunately, named names. Shopping trips, taking children to school, theatre outings and drives to the country were among the services provided. The drivers also spent many hours waiting for their passengers. So I wasn’t all that surprised by the recent revelations of hair-raising sums — £33,000 a day, £12 million a year — spent by the BBC on taxis at taxpayers’ or, in this case, taxi-payers’ expense.

I often get letters from readers of the Sunday Telegraph literary pages complaining about misleading book reviews.