How will the BBC save £2 billion? Axe the journalists, of course

A short while after becoming director-general of the BBC, Greg Dyke gathered a whole bunch of staff together at some warehouse near the City Airport to thrash things out and to deliver unto them his vision for the corporation. There was an air of trepidation among those gathered; Greg had very recently flexed his muscles at Television Centre by banning biscuits. These biscuits were the sort you have at meetings and which, incidentally, I have never seen anywhere except in meetings — three or four different kinds of biscuit waiting balefully on a white plate alongside a screw-top jar of stewed, rubbery coffee, telling you that you were in for an hour or two’s concerted misery, probably with a PowerPoint presentation on an overhead projector and maybe even a professional facilitator. There was an oatmeal-type biscuit and one resembling an Abbey Crunch and a pale circular thing which, if it could talk, would have explained indignantly and probably in a Midlands accent that it was ‘a type of shortbread, actually’. Dismal Meeting Biscuits.

Anyway, they all got banned by Greg and we staffers got nervous as a result. Plus there was the jealous suspicion, as there always is at these times, that further up the food chain in the BBC people were still having their biscuits and eating them, probably coconut biscuits too, or maybe even Bonne Maman Galettes from Waitrose. Greg had also said that the BBC was too bureaucratic, that there were far too many middle managers and that quite a few would have to go, but that wasn’t a problem because we all agreed with him on this issue. Everybody knows the BBC is too bureaucratic. Axe the middle managers, sure — but leave the biscuits alone.

Which is why the meeting in Docklands was so surreal — I mean even more surreal than these ghastly corporate get-togethers usually are.