Sue Lynas and her crystal ball

Jenny Abramsky, Leslie Douglas, Mark Damazer and most of the former communications chiefs of the BBC from Richard Peel to Sue Farr turned up last night to a packed farewell for Sue Lynas, the outgoing head of communications and marketing for BBC radio. Lynas, who served 31 years as an unflappable and cool head, confessed to making one very substantial misjudgment, writing a speech for Liz Forgan back in 1995, when she was running BBC radio, predicting that it would be doing well if its audience share stabilised at 30% in 2005 in the face of a commercial radio onslaught — which of course never materialised. In fact, to laughter, she said that when the Rajars now came out, it was something of an embarrassment to see the BBC riding so high, with a 55% share.