This was the BBC in its happiest of happy places. Sure the Beeb likes to do the news, but there is nothing it likes more than reporting on itself. The holy grail of its output. There are whole departments within the Beeb dedicated to making TV and radio programmes about other BBC TV and radio programmes.
There can be no other organisation that subjects itself to quite so much self-analysis. Only a psychotherapist would be able to fully determine whether it is solipsism or self-hatred. Maybe both. So much so that it goes out of its way to recruit people whose sole job is to criticise it.
Some who are even ideologically opposed to it. Would not be that bothered if it no longer existed. Or lost its licence fee. Not that anything would ever be said to this effect. Because all its critics are motivated solely by love. This hurts them so much more that it hurts the BBC. Really.
Monday afternoon saw the latest round of self-harm as Samir Shah, BBC chair, Robbie Gibb, a member of the board, and Michael Prescott, a former adviser to its editorial guidelines and standards committee and author of a leaked memo that led to the resignations of Tim Davie, the director general, and Deborah Turness, head of news, gave evidence to the Commons culture committee.
Picking over the entrails of its failures in parliament. This was peak BBC. It’s a wonder they didn’t suspend all its afternoon programming and screen the sessions in their entirety. This was bigger than a state funeral.
First in the hot seat was Prescott. No one was more mortified at the damage his memo had done than Mike himself. All he had ever wanted was to save the Beeb from itself. Open his heart and you would find BBC engraved on it.
There had never been any party politics involved. He was just a good old centrist dad. Come to think of it, he didn’t even really understand how this politics thing worked. Even though he had been the political editor of the Sunday Times for four years from 1997 to 2001. Now all he wanted was the quiet life.
Poor old Mike. There he had been minding his own business, sending off a 19-page memo never anticipating it would precipitate some high-level resignations. It had just been a small everyday thing. Just a few problems. Come to think of it, they weren’t even really problems, he said.
Rather they were incipient problems. Minor criticisms that had the potential to develop into problems. They were so small, they were hardly detectable to the naked eye. It was only because he loved the BBC so much that he felt it necessary to raise them. And even then he had expected them to be dealt with quietly. Behind closed doors.
So all he had done was raise the matter with the BBC board, Ofcom and the culture committee. And then all of a sudden it had appeared in the Daily Telegraph. No one had been more surprised than him.
He had no idea how this could have possibly have happened. Maybe the Telegraph employed mind readers. For someone in the eye of a storm, he seemed remarkably incurious. Naive even. And it wasn’t as if he had had 10 years working at the Sunday Times to give him some insight into how these leak thingies worked.
You could have knocked Mike down with a feather. Just imagine a critical memo falling into the hands of a media organisation that actively wished the BBC harm. Except Mike couldn’t imagine this because he had an imagination bypass. He was just an ingenu.
He had no idea why the Telegraph had focused on the culture wars of Trump, Gaza and gender. If it had been left to him he would have splashed on an incorrect story about people from ethnic minorities paying more for their insurance. Even though the BBC had acted on that.
The rest of the session was just more of the same. Mike insisting that he was doing the BBC a favour by holding them to far higher standards than he had ever met himself as a journalist. He merely wanted them to go the extra mile in the pursuit of impartiality. Why hadn’t the BBC broadcast a documentary on Kamala Harris inciting violence? Even if she hadn’t. That’s what he expected. He wanted the BBC to be the best version of itself possible.
As for how he got the job at the BBC, Mike was also guilty of the same level of self reflection as the BBC. As far as he was concerned, it was merely his own brilliance. He had filled in an application and the panel had no choice but to appoint him. And it certainly had nothing to do with the fact that he was friends with Gibb. Because, look, when you reach Mike’s status in life you can’t help but know everyone important. That’s merely how the establishment works.
Come the second session, Shah was a picture of misery. Chastising himself repeatedly as he apologised over and over again while trying to muddy the waters. It’s tough being expected to reach 100% purity. A world where mistakes cannot be tolerated.
Robbie Gibb – make that Sir Robbie Gibb: he was knighted for his brilliance as Theresa May’s communication director, some people fail upwards – was the master of deflection. Nothing was, or ever has been, his fault. Other people had made errors but never him.
He, too, bowed down before the majesty of the Beeb. Wishing it only well. But he had been saddened that some people had not been able to leave their politics – their leftwing politics – at the door. He might be a Tory but when it came to the BBC he was always impartial. He too was mystified that the memo got leaked to the Telegraph.
There had been no boardroom takeover of the BBC by the right. It was just the right were the only people who could be trusted to run the corporation. Would he be resigning? Heaven no. Things were all going ever so well. As the session ended you couldn’t help wondering if it had been the wrong people who had lost their jobs.
The Bonfire of the Insanities by John Crace (Guardian Faber Publishing, £16.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
