The Stage

BBC farce

Published Tuesday 9 October 2007 at 12:00

The Crowngate affair at the BBC, which culminated in the Corporation’s very able controller of BBC1 Peter Fincham falling on his sword, has all the makings of a French farce - a gross deception at its heart, a wise man being made a fool, and, most of all, the idea that the Crown can do no wrong.

And those thinking that Fincham is the foolish-looking wise man in this metaphor are wrong - that fool is Mark Thompson and the BBC, who through their own paranoia and knee-jerking, have lost a hugely able employee.

First of all it must be assumed that all concerned are now telling the truth - that the Queen, perish the thought, did not storm out of the photoshoot featured in the documentary A Year With the Queen and that the whole sequence was put together by a mischievous monkey at RDF, the company that made it.

Of course she didn’t. As if she would. She’s the Queen. Queen’s don’t storm. The photographer has said that she did not and among the first facts to emerge from the panicking people running in and out of the metaphorical French windows, was that the Queen is innocent.

So, Fincham presented to the press an erroneously edited highlight of the programme that was to be the centrepiece of the autumn scheduling. He did so in good faith. His only ‘crime’ was tardiness in correcting the mistake before it was splashed across the world’s media outlets.

For that he should apologise, but go? RDF’s chief creative officer Stephen Lambert, who was responsible for the edit, resigned, which makes more sense. But Fincham?

One can’t help wondering whether this is a symptom of a much deeper problem at the BBC - a collapse of self-confidence that has left it, like some anorexic teenager, self-harming every time something goes wrong.

So bashed is its ego after Blair’s bullying administration and the Stasi-like slapdown following the ‘sexed up’ Iraq war document, that now, any time it is accused of anything, it will fall to its knees like one of Torquemada’s Inquisition victims, pleading for forgiveness.

Blue Peter cats, rigged game show votes and now, horror of horrors, the Queen being made a fool of. Better that the BBC hurts itself rather than have the government hurt it instead.

Perhaps, now, we understand where the cutting-edge, authority-questioning journalism has gone - the lack of powerful dramas such as Boys from the Blackstuff or the Play for Todays that questioned our society and challenged the status quo.

Just like in Moliere’s plays - if these things must be questioned, make sure that the establishment comes riding in at the end and saves the day. If not, off with the head of BBC1!

Paul Thompson

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