• The clues were there, in Telegraph editor-in-chief Jason Seiken’s Twitter feed, to the news on Friday that he will henceforth be redirecting his energies away from editorial and towards “future strategy and direction”. On 4 October, the American seer interrupted his usual links to Telegraph stories with: “‘If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading’ - Lao Tzu”, which at the time seemed of a piece with his message to staff that they had to adapt to reduced numbers, the digital-first mindset and a radical new shift pattern including 6am starts for many. Last Monday, however, he seemed to be talking to himself when he turned to ancient Chinese philosophy again: “‘Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality’ - Lao Tzu”. Perhaps he then withdrew to a higher realm, far above the mere transient troubles of the newsroom, because as of Friday (and by then editor-in-chief in name only) he hadn’t tweeted again.
• Ahead of Channel 4’s Stand Up To Cancer telethon, factual entertainment commissioner Tom Beck offered to go off the ski-jump of C4’s The Jump naked if £10,000 was received in donations in just two hours, and his boss Liam Humphreys promised “to spend 14 hours on The Island, with no food or water or bedding, in my underpants”. Whether through genuine charitable impulses, self-interest or sadism, indie producers were quick to respond, and by the end of the week more than £17,000 had been donated. Interesting donations included a possibly over-exuberant one from “naked naked naked xxx davina” (Davina McCall presents The Jump), several conditional on clothes staying on, and “Isn’t it your job, Tom, to get OTHER people to do ridiculous things? Still, we’ve seen you naked before … Mum and Dad”.
• Monkey’s quote of the week: “Who are you and what do you do?” - Radio 4 presenter Fi Glover to someone with their hand up at a Radio Festival event she was hosting. “I’m Helen Boaden, your boss”, said the director of BBC Radio.
• Ed “Hazy” Vaizey, the culture minister, may have been genuflecting to his BBC-sceptic boss Sajid Javid when he replied “no” at the Radio Festival to Jane Garvey’s question “do you ever listen to Radio 3?” and said he listens to the “absolutely brilliant” commercial alternative Classic FM instead. But, embarrassingly, he was also forgetting the backdrop to his own Twitter feed, a giant image of one of the BBC Proms – all available exclusively (as audio) on Radio 3. Which suggests either his reply to Garvey was bullshit, or claiming to be Proms-mad is. Hence his sheepish tweet a few days later, “thoroughly enjoying breakfast show on Radio 3 on my digital radio this morning”, and his equally humiliating retweets from the BBC station’s show In Tune.
• Interviewed in the Bookseller (she has a book out), the Any Answers and former 5 Live presenter Anita Anand rejoices that “there are now two women presenting the Today programme” but complains that “it’s still largely acceptable to have this grand figure of a male presenter and a female sidekick”. Could she perhaps be thinking, for example, of BBC2’s The Daily Politics, where Andrew Neil bags all the interviews with politicians and a series of Doctor Who-style female companions do the other chores? Hang on, wasn’t she one of them?
• Hope may be on the horizon for Susanna Reid aboard the leaky ship that is Good Morning Britain. Her former BBC Breakfast colleague Sian Williams has shown there is life after breakfast television. Monkey hears Williams - who turned down the move with BBC Breakfast to Salford - has just been given a distinction for her Master’s in psychology from Westminster University. Which should prove useful in her new berth as presenter of BBC topical and ethical debate show Sunday Morning Live. In entirely unrelated news, Good Morning Britain staff may want to know that Westminster also offers an MA in media management. Just saying.
• In a blog on Friday, director of BBC News James Harding appealed for suggestions from his staff for “the Future of News project”, looking beyond “‘daily output” for a “menu of ideas” on how to adapt to the changing information environment. He left unclear, though, whether the posts below the blog would be filtered, and if they could be anonymous (whether John Simpson, say, could use an alias to voice his reported concerns about “tough women” managers). If real names are compulsory, it looks unlikely that anyone will suggest that, with a salary of £340,000, Harding should be doing his future-gazing himself; and likely that, when the W1A-style head of strategy he’s currently recruiting for his empire arrives, he or she will feel somewhat redundant if Harding has already crowd-sourced his strategy.
• A promising feud is unfolding, begun when the Telegraph’s Peter Oborne (who has been rude on the late-night BBC2 show before) called top No 10 spinner Craig Oliver “a grubby little individual” on Tuesday’s Newsnight. Oliver, it seems, texted Oborne to ask if he was “OK” because “some BBC people have been on to me worried you were tired and emotional”; and then three days later that message popped up in a Daily Mail diary, infuriating Oborne who insisted he was sober and told the Mail Oliver’s action was “unworthy” of “an official working for the prime minister”. He then upped the ante again with a blog called Craig Oliver: Grubby and Getting Grubbier, in which he accused his enemy of planting quotes after the Scottish referendum with “two favoured Tory [Sunday] columnists” about how Cameron and Osborne planned to exploit the result to their party’s advantage. Thereby starting another feud, as the tame columnist fed the quote Oborne especially loathed – “According to one senior source, ‘Cameron exploded a massive bomb in enemy territory’ “ – was his Telegraph colleague Matthew d’Ancona.
• The most recent minutes of the BBC Trust have been published, but item 102 on the agenda – for which the trustees, top BBC bosses including Tony Hall, and the trust’s senior strategy adviser were all present – has been redacted by blacking out. Various theories as to what occurred have been advanced: (a) rethinking Hall’s signature hand gesture – is “inverted Gareth Bale” really good enough, when it just looks like “botched Gareth Bale” and everyone’s copying him anyway? (b) should Alan Yentob fill the veteran non-dancer slot on Strictly (the meeting was in July)? (c) casting lots for who tells John Humphrys it’s time to go next May (d) discussing the threatened end of the line for the Dimbleby dynasty after 60 years of anchoring – is there still time to convert jazz singer Kate or restaurateur Henry into a third-generation anchor for the 2020 election? (e) a secret audience with Hall’s guru John Birt, either in person or by Skype, in which he prophesied how broadcasting will develop in the next 25 years and revealed the Next Big Thing after the internet. (f) In-house Christmas panto casting – Cinderella with Tim Davie as Prince Charming, Danny Cohen and James Purnell as Ugly Sisters, Good Fairy tbc and new Trust chair (still to be appointed then but expected to be a woman) as Cinders.
