It really was a knockout

On 25 June 2003, the day on which Alastair Campbell declar- ed all-out war against the BBC in his evidence to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC), the BBC’s Director-General, Greg Dyke, was engaged in country dancing in Surrey. He and other top BBC executives were attending one of their regular strategy conferences at which ‘as usual, we had some bonding activity, in which members of the Executive did silly things to make them feel more of a team’.

Their very silly thing on this occasion was an It’s a Knockout competition, which was interrupted by a telephone call reporting that Mr Campbell had ‘gone ballistic’ before the FAC. ‘We decided to carry on the game, probably because my team was winning,’ writes Mr Dyke. ‘We were still ahead until the last round when we all had to do country dancing. At that moment Alan Yentob came into his own and his team won on “artistic merit”.’