The BBC’s biggest problem

As I write this, the director-general of the BBC is being quizzed on the corporation’s future by people who were around when Sir John Reith kind of set the whole thing up. A cheap crack, I know – and I have nothing against the House of Lords. Anything which mediates our dangerous experiment with democracy is to be welcomed – the peers, the royals, the judges etc. I have been dipping in and out of the event and have yet to hear Tim Davie asked if he plans to bring back It’s That Man Again or whether or not the injunction ‘sod off’ is suitable for post-watershed viewing. If only they would ask this kind of thing, in a way – the crisis is rather more existential today.

Davie has a lot on his plate, not least the fact that when he took up the job he seemed to accept Auntie dressed to the left and in the intervening 34 months she has swung even further in that direction.