You don’t get to devise and make arts programmes like Arena or Imagine by accident. Nor do you somehow, mysteriously, become controller of BBC2 then controller of BBC1. You aren’t kept on as corporation creative director into your late 60s either, or doomed to leave that post reluctantly of your own volition. Least of all – taking on so much, maybe too much – is there any obvious point in adding another juggling ball, marked Kids Company, to your manic act?
Alan Yentob may have become a knockabout target for BBC critics who gag over big salaries and pensions. He may have walked a little close to the line of editorial interference when Kids Company hit studio stage centre. He surely rubs some colleagues up the wrong way. But he is a high talent, a BBC servant from intern to last P50. He’s one of a select few who put the arts on television. He commissioned countless terrific shows. He is undeniably creative. And it’s quite wrong not to say that amid so much axe-grinding and easy jeering. The most valuable people in any big organisation are ones of individual talent. That may make them a bit difficult to deal with sometimes. But – golly! – you miss them when they’re gone.
Allegra con brio
Allegra Stratton combines political savvy with human warmth. She’s been a great Newsnight guide through the thickets of parliament. She deserves her step up to be national editor at ITV News. And there’s only one tremor of doubt, perhaps, at the prospect of Stratton and Robert Peston (new political editor) and Tom Bradby (political editor turned master of the revels) getting together at Ten. You don’t have to live in Oldham West to know about the fearsome Westminster bubble of introspection. ITV will have to be careful this isn’t it.
