Beeb brings in the big hitters

Boom. Boom. That's the sound of the BBC bringing in the big guns to fend off licence fee top-slicing, which was raised again this week by the Tories. Two weighty invitations from the Beeb have just dropped through the letterbox of Monkey Towers. They're to speeches about the future role of public service broadcasting by Sir David Attenborough and Stephen Fry on April 30 and May 7. The invitations say the speeches are part of the BBC's "contribution to Ofcom's review of public service broadcasting". Which Monkey translates roughly as: "Back off Tories and Ofcom, we're not giving up any licence fee without playing our trump cards." And you don't get much bigger trumps than the national treasure double bill of Attenborough and Fry. Should guarantee more column inches than er... Jeremy Hunt and Ed Richards.