Bbc

As time passes, there is — blessedly — ever less need to pay attention to ‘untold’ stories about Diana, Princess of Wales; but the Channel 4 documentary Diana: The Truth behind the Interview did make me sit up a bit. It revealed, and the BBC does not deny, that Martin Bashir and Panorama colleagues caused fake invoices to be created purporting to show that a rogue employee of Charles Spencer, the Princess’s brother, had sold stories about her to newspapers. It seems this forgery — and Panorama’s assurances about Bashir’s good character — persuaded Lord Spencer to meet Bashir and to urge his sister to do the same. The result

Having not watched television for nine months and already growing bored of the 1,000-piece jigsaw of General Alfredo Stroessner (part of the ‘Vigorous Leaders’ range from Waddingtons), my wife suggested — for a novelty — that maybe we should take in the new political thriller starring Hugh Laurie, called Roadkill. We have fond memories of Laurie from previous dramas and are both mildly interested in politics, so it seemed an agreeable idea. ‘What side is it on?’ I asked, with a note of warning. ‘BBC One,’ replied the missus, and we looked at each other glumly and I said: ‘Oh Christ. It’ll be a woke BAME-athon. Isn’t there an old

Misplaced Trust Sir: Charles Moore is as ever bang on target (The Spectator’s Notes, 26 September). National Trust members have had a raw deal this year, but so have many loyal staff and volunteers. It should not surprise any visitor to a National Trust property that a very rich person built it and lived there. No doubt they achieved great financial wealth by being quick-witted, entrepreneurial and above all ruthless in their dealing. They likely exploited everyone irrespective of race or creed. How many mill owners sent ‘boys’ up chimneys, down mines and into the machinery to clear blockages? The National Trust is a curator of buildings, artefacts and estates.

Back when I was a kid, just before the internet flattened the world, I spent my Saturday afternoons listening to live football on the radio. The signal came and went, voices bobbed up above the waves of static and sank back down into their crackly depths, but the experience was always magical. I clung to the commentators’ every word and watched the ball dance from player to player in my mind. Probably the most memorable voice was the Northern Irish snarl of Alan Green. Anyone familiar with BBC Radio 5 Live will know his style: irate and indignant, liable to explode at any moment about some mistimed pass or bad

Gstaad I’ve been wrestling all week with indecision, the kind that tests one’s soul, and the uncertainty is killing me. It’s like having to choose between Keira and Jennifer, when it’s normal to want both. No, I’m not being greedy — and it’s not even my fault that I’m in this position, but that of my esteemed colleague Douglas Murray, author of The Madness of Crowds and a fellow columnist. Two weeks ago, at his most serious, he proposed that I be put in charge of either the BBC or the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Yippee, hooray! Douglas was annoyed when certain Tory wets did not defend the appointment

China’s covered Sir: If Charles Moore had contacted the BBC, rather than conducting a fruitless Google search, we would have told him we run three China bureaux — in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong — and that our three mainland correspondents are backed up by production and administrative staff locally. In Hong Kong, we have a team for the BBC’s online Chinese language service. We would have outlined our agenda-setting, and award-winning, reporting on the Uighurs over the last two years, as well as other major issues such as Covid and the situation in Hong Kong. We would have highlighted our BBC2 three-part series on President Xi. And we would

Reading the speech Tony Hall gave to the Edinburgh Television Festival, I was struck by his upbeat, confident tone. The outgoing director-general of the BBC talked about how its reporting of the coronavirus crisis had brought its core mission as a public service broadcaster into sharper focus and boosted its popularity, particularly among 16- to 34-year-olds. He said his goal when he arrived at the BBC was to reach a global audience of 500 million by 2022, its centenary year, and this target has now been revised upwards to a billion by the end of the decade. ‘But it needs extra investment from government and that bid is with them

The summer ritual of A-level results day is so well known it’s easy to forget the thousands of students receiving their BTec National results. That’s the intro to a BBC News item on vocational qualification results issued today. It’s also the story of British culture and economics, told in a single, unwittingly revealing, sentence. Around 250,000 kids will get BTEC results today – that’s almost as many as the 300,000 or so who get A-level results. But of course, media and political attention paid to the latter group is vastly greater than the former. Why? Because BTECs are for other people: people who are poorer and whose parents didn’t do A-levels