Anne McElvoy: Standard-bearer for the BBC?

Will newspaper columnists planning to apply for Mark Thompson's not-even-yet-vacant BBC director general job please form an orderly queue? Monkey only asks after London Evening Standard columnist and Radio 3 presenter Anne McElvoy on Wednesday followed the Daily Mail's Quentin Letts by throwing her hat into the ring as well. McElvoy, joining the lineup of "rank outsiders" – her phrase, not Monkey's – declares that she is standing as the "Emmeline Pankhurst candidate" in a challenge to the BBC's "dilatory approach" to women on-air. "Most of the really important things that happen around us are interpreted for us by Robert Peston, Andrew Marr, Melvyn Bragg, Andrew Neil and Nick Robinson," McElvoy grumbles. The former Times writer goes on to rail against BBC3 (comparing it to a "cheap online channel"), the corporation's pitching processes ("comically slow") and the BBC Trust (close to becoming "a mere complaints department"). McElvoy dismisses Lettsy as "running for the Meldrew tendency" (ie let's turn the clock back to broadcasting circa 1964). But as they both want to axe BBC3, there's no chance either of their papers will ever let them leave to do the job anyhow. Axe BBC3? That would be a rich source of BBC-knocking stories gone, right there.