At EDF, we don't just encourage you to use less electricity, we actually reward you for it. That's why when you use less during peak times on weekdays, we give you free electricity on Sundays. How you use it is up to you. EDF. Change is in our power. How to reduce their weekday peak electricity usage by 50% can earn up to 16 hours of free electricity per week. For details, eligibility and season seas, visit edfenergy.com forward slash r-power. Hello and welcome to Inside is the podcast all about the world of television with me, Jimmy Mulvill. Me, Peter Fincham. And this is a podcast, as you know, for people who love television, I want to find out a bit more about what goes on behind the scenes. Now, given that this is the first episode we recorded since Matt Britton was officially confirmed in this, but he's the new director and director of the BBC, Jim. Officially confirmed in his post as the new DG, we're particularly delighted to be joined this week by one of his predecessors, Greg Dyke, who was director general of the BBC between 2000 and 2004. Like Matt Britton, Greg had also never worked at the BBC when he took over the top job. Though unlike Matt Britton, he'd spent a career steeped in the television business. He said his main aim when he arrived at the BBC was to make people there feel valued again. The response from the BBC staff when he announced his resignation in the aftermath of the Hutton report suggests that that was something that he more than managed to achieve. On the day he left thousands of BBC staff across the country, walked out in support of him. And he now says that with the benefit of hindsight, he wishes he hadn't resigned that day, but instead dared the BBC governors to sack him. But we can get to all that. Greg, thanks so much for coming along. Maybe we could start with saying Matt Britton, he's arrived at the BBC in a couple of weeks, he's spent an entire career at Google, he's never made a television programme, or a radio programme or commissioned one, etc, etc. What's your advice to him? I don't think I'd give him any advice other than enjoy it. It's a great job. You really can have influence, give you power, you can do things, you can go home, you can wake up in the morning with a good idea and you can actually get it done. And the number of jobs that you can do that in are very few, but recognise that it's likely to end in tears. I mean, when I joined, because I'd never worked there before, it meant that you weren't high bound by all sorts of things that actually do limit people if they've been there whole life in the BBC. Because that's all there. I'm the sum disadvantage of it. I mean, you don't understand. I don't think I ever understood the politics of the BBC. I remember thinking that I was like a sort of transplanted organ from outside who'd been put into the body of the BBC. And was eventually rejected. I was about to say exactly. And I tried, like I was a kidney as it were, and I tried very hard to be a proper kidney that would do the job that a kidney needs to do for the BBC. That's not what he's going to break down in a minute, but eventually, actually, exactly as you say, Jimmy, the BBC kind of rejected me. Tim Davy made his speech, as you know, a couple of weeks ago. Yeah, I went. I went, actually. Yes, it was a good speech. It was good. And it was very self-deprecatory. And like you, he has a good sense of humour about himself. And but he did say, you know, I wish the next guy luck. You need a bit of luck in this job. And when I think about, you know, what happened to Peter and to you in a way, I mean, it was kind of circumstances beyond your control that put you in that position where you ended up resigning. You jumped maybe before you were pushed. I mean, No, I think I was pushed before I jumped. Yes. Okay. Well, do you, I mean, do you feel comfortable talking about that? Because it's such a, Yes, I've never. You've never hidden away. I mean, you came on to have a good news for you. I mean, very soon after and you hosted that. So you've never kind of run and hid away from that. I mean, the Hutton Inquiry and the Andrew Gilligan stuff, it was huge, a huge thing at the time. Like you said, the BBC always has a crisis, but this was a major crisis, wasn't it? It was a major crisis before the next one and the last after the last one. There's always major crisis at the BBC. I mean, if you're publicly funded, it's a different world to being if you're commercially funded. I mean, there were quite crises in ITV, but they're never like the ones that you hit at the BBC. The point you're making about the next scandal, I remember leaving the BBC and I felt that as I walked down the street, there was a thing around my neck saying, this is the idiot who's just left the BBC having made a mess of the thing with Andy Lieberbitch and the Queen and so on. And that went on until another scandal came along at the BBC. And at that point I thought, oh my God, everybody's forgotten me. Yes, gosh goodness. Although it had a big impact on you at the time, it's like you have to get over those things. But maybe for the listeners who, I'm not sure, I mean, we've got listeners that young that weren't alive to join the Huttley and Crally, but for those who might not be aware of what actually happened, there was a broadcast, wasn't it? Andrew Gilligan on Radio 4 on the Today programme. Yeah, I mean, basically, the Today programme and a story that said that the government of the day, Tony Blair's government, had fixed the dossiers. Sexed it up. Sexed up the dossiers to make it look like the Iraqis were a greater threat to Britain than they were. Now, what was interesting is at that time, I thought it was about 50-50 in terms of the public view of it. In the years later, no one doubts that they sexed it up except for Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell. Whenever I bump into Alistair Campbell, he still shouts at me. Obviously, the BBC is now facing something which, when people are always talking about existential threats to the BBC, and often they turn out to not be quite as existential as you think, but the threat of Donald Trump suing the BBC for tens of billions of pounds is that's in Matt Britain's entree as a pretty big issue to deal with. It is. I don't know what the legal advice is of the BBC. My non-legal vein looks at that and says, just play it long. It's going to go away. Just play it long. It'll go away. I agree. But it's interesting to talk about the journalistic side of the job. You were a journalist, weren't you? Yeah. You had those instincts. I don't think Matt Britain was ever a journalist, and they're thinking of bringing someone alongside him to take care of all that stuff. What do you think about that kind of two-headed thing? Is that person also head of news? I don't know. No, I don't know what it is. I mean, Eden, you had a new, because Deborah Turner has resided at the same time as Tim, so you could have a head of news or you could have a deputy director general who covers that beat. Which we just happened before. Which they had with Mark. Mark Beiford was a bit like that. Mark Beiford was like that to Mark Thompson. And he was a kind of from a journalistic background. I mean, looking back at that period, I mean, the one thing I would say is, by and large, the governors of the BBC don't come out covered in glory. And I think that happens quite often. I think the governors tend to lose their nerve. And it depends who the chairman or the chair is at that time. But you know, because it's a job that, I mean, in most organisations, particularly someone like the BBC, the relationship between the chief executive, the director general, and the chair of the board is absolutely crucial. And if they don't get on, you're in real trouble. Was your chairman Christopher Blanton? My name was Christopher Blanton, but then he then left. And there it was. He's got a strong character, Blanton, wasn't he? Oh, yes. Well, I had, he'd been much, I mean, I only went to the BBC because Christopher Blanton. Of course, because he, yes. He was chairman of London Weekend. Of course he was, yeah. Before, when I was shooting. He created the share option scheme around the time of the, I don't know whether you want to go into this, but around the time of the franchises for things, he created a scheme, am I right in thinking, to retain the loyalty of the key people? Yeah. Which, because I remember Nick Elliott, who was the head of drama at the time, I was had lunch with him. Nick Elliott was a great man for going out to lunch. And he said, I've been given this loyalty scheme thing. I've had to sign something. It's going to give me millions of pounds, but I'm not going anywhere anyway. I didn't need it. I don't know why they've given it to me. Well, you couldn't be sure of that because what people say, I wasn't going anywhere. It's not a wish to. It was a very attractive scheme for senior management. Was this 1992 the franchise thing? Yeah. I think I'm right in saying that. I say that because we, Jimmy and I at the time, were running independent companies, Hattrick and Taught Bank, which turned out to be a very good thing to be doing. And we, you know, greatly to our benefit in the long term. But at the time, it seemed like we were scrabbling around the small independent companies trying to make a living. Like there's a flee on the backside of the television establishment. That was like at the Wild West in 1992 when she pressed the button on those franchise bids because 10s lost their bid, didn't they? 10s lost. Which was unthinkable really. I can't win one. Yeah. London we came, we bid 11 million and the opponent's bid 32 and we won. 11 million. Because they've owned them. We bid 11 million. Well, remember. It's not a quaint, isn't it? What do you think about it? Central and Scottish bid 2000 each. That was all. And they got and they returned their franchise. Yeah, because they discovered there was no, I mean the whole system was totally flawed. I remember because it was the era of faxes, wasn't it? And the fax came out of a fax machine. Oh yes, when we got to Moby's one. We started spewing out of the fax machine saying you're either still in business or you're not. But I mean, what has really changed is that the value of owning a broadcast license is nil, virtually now. The value is what are the programs? What programs have you got? And therefore the idea that a regulator could say, well, we're taking away your license. We just so you can have the license, but we own Coronation Street. We own, you know, all these shows. Therefore, what are you going to do without them? And also when we talk about it on the podcast is the advent of YouTube presents another problem because a lot of this content now just gets dumped on YouTube where no one's being paid anything. Yeah. And so it's kind of, and the BBC, I mean, let's all go back to the BBC, Matt Britton being appointed. Is he's from that world? And I'm very interested to think, you know, to see what, how he squares that circle. The BBC couldn't be more different from YouTube, but clearly there has to be an overlap for the BBC to survive. Well, I don't know Matt Britton. We've supposed to be having lunch one day to just swap stories. I hear from what I hear from the people who know him, say he's a good bloke. Yeah. They like it. He's likable. And what he's got to do, the first thing you got to do is get the staff on your side. If you can, you know, not just, you know, so that they'll support you in different times. So what did you do? Because I remember you made a speech. Well, we also put in the programme and said, how do we make this a better place to work? Yeah. And you can do a lot of things without a lot of money to make it a better place to put for people to. If you can make it a better place to work, then you've got those people on your side for, you know, you've got your staff on your side. And that's what we tried to do. I was also, I mean, I was there in a lucky period. You know, the Blair government had just given us inflation plus 1% for four years in terms of increasing the licence fee. Well, that gave you ability to plan and to know that you were going to get more money next year or more money the year after. But I mean, I'm come to the conclusion that I've always had my doubts about the licence fee. I'm not sure it's the best way of funding the BBC. Well, we should come to that. Because that's obviously going to be a rather ambitious one. But I do think it's absolutely vital that we continue public funding of the BBC. I mean, one of the arguments about the BBC has always been that it can do things that the commercial sector can't do or won't do because they can't afford it. It's going to become much, much greater pressure in the years ahead. Because I do think, I do think IGV in Channel 4 will struggle in the years ahead and they will inevitably reduce what they spend on programming that doesn't get big audiences and spend it on money that gets big audiences, which we would all do in a circumstances where if you don't do that, you don't survive. Therefore, I think there's an interesting discussion about the future of the BBC, which is if it's using public money, what parts of the market does it need to do more of? Because I mean, for instance, I'll give you one example. Regional news, I mean, regional papers are dying on there. They've virtually gone. Where's the scrutiny going to come of politicians in those regions? I think IGV will do less in the future. I think it'll come down to the BBC and I think the BBC probably needs to spend more money and probably have more regions and all sorts of things. But they'll only do that if they can convince the government to give them more money. Because that's not going to have commercial return. That's not going to get them to big audiences. But what you're just saying... I'm not sure that's true. If you actually go through and add up the audiences on their regional news shows at 6.30, across the country, you'll find that's probably one of their best slots. Yeah, no, no, fair enough. But it doesn't matter whether they make any commercial money. What matters is what is the service it's giving to the people in those regions? It's the USP, isn't it? It's what is unique about the BBC that no other provider is providing, which then demonstrates to the government it's worth having. Yes, yeah. But, you know, to go back to the old Reesian formula, entertains also in that formula. And if the BBC doesn't reach mass audiences with some of its programs, whether it's strict to come dancing or whatever it is, then you weaken the case for the licensing. The BBC's always understood that and understood it's got to play in that game. Well, I remember... Not just being if you like, just be a public servant. I remember when Chris Smith was the Secretary of State when I first got the job as Director-General. And his view of it is, why don't you just do wonderful things? It doesn't matter how big the audience is. And I made exactly... He used to make exactly that point. Yeah, that's fine. But in two years' time, when you're not the Secretary of State, and we've got a new Secretary of State who doesn't have that view at all, the BBC is isolated. At EDF, we don't just encourage you to use less electricity. We actually reward you for it. That's why when you use less during peak times on weekdays, we give you free electricity on Sundays. How you use it is up to you. EDF. Change is in our power. Households who reduce their weekday peak electricity usage by 50% can earn up to 16 hours of free electricity per week. For full details, eligibility and season fees, visit edfenergy.com. You need anything from Tesco? Snacks. I'm milk love. How about discounts on the holidays abroad? Don't forget fruit and veg for our school. Free nappies for premature babies. And the quiet hour in store to shop in peace. Can I get £2.50 cinematic as in Tuesdays? We know you need more than just groceries from us. We do all this because every little helps. We need anything from Tesco. Oh, yeah, do you want to get something? For further information, visit tescopilseed.com. You were saying, Greg, that in a way, your period at the BBC, you were a lucky period because you had a Labour government who were fundamentally quite supportive of the BBC. Now, you could say the same now because although the BBC has huge challenges, the government is not gunning for it. In fact, the opposite, at least, and then she'll criticise the BBC when it's appropriate to criticise the BBC. But fundamentally value the BBC. You only need to go back a few years and you get to a government, I'm thinking the Boris Johnson government, which looked as if it wanted to literally destroy the BBC. And certainly Nadine Doris, I'm sure you'll remember this, when she was the culture secretary, literally announced the end of the licence fee is coming at the end of the current charter period. Now, we all understand the anachronistic nature of the licence fee and that it's not an easy sell to the public. And you've already said you've got your doubts about the licence fee. But how do you fund the BBC then? Is there a realistic and effective alternative? Well, I wrote a chapter in a book last time around when it was up and saying, there are a lot of ways of doing this, but let's not kid ourselves, what we're going to get at the end of this process is a licence fee. And I think that's what will happen this time. But it is, in some ways, it's a regressive tax, isn't it? It basically says, no matter how much money you've got, you pay the same, which I think is probably unfair. And it's becoming harder to enforce and people who avoid it are going up all the time. Yeah. And personally, I think it has to be publicly funded and how much it gets can't be decided by the government of the day. Because if you leave it to the government of the day, the pressure will be to be nice to them. And that's not the job of the BBC. But it is obviously, it's a publicly funded organisation. But it's slightly schizophrenic because obviously a few years ago, it split off its production base to become a commercial entity. Do you think that was a good idea? Probably. Yes, I think it was. I remember when I first became director general sitting around and after about a few months, I sat there and said to the senior people, why does nobody here think a million pounds is a lot of money? Because in the commercial sector, you do think a million pounds is a lot of money. Largely, because if you've got shareholders and you're supposed to give, you know, you're supposed to declare your profits, you expect that those profits are supposed to grow each year. So a million pounds is quite a lot of money. Whereas if you're spending three and a half billion, million pounds isn't a lot of money. And I feared by the end of four years, I didn't think million pounds was a lot of money. I'd say when I'd been controlled by BBC One for about a week, I had a meeting with my, I don't know what she was called, the finance controller, whatever, the head of finance for the BBC One team. And I said to her, can you talk me through the budget, please? So she taught me through the budget saying, you know, we've got this much put aside for drama and this much for entertainment and this much for documentaries. And it's a very, very complicated briefing. And at the end of it, I scratched my head and said, well, I'll have to take this away because I haven't really got my head around it first time out. I said, but I've just got one question. Is it enough? And she said, oh, Peter, you'll struggle to spend it. That's another world, isn't it? But basically at that point, there was a person who came around on a monthly basis saying, have you spent enough money? Because this is in a way how publicly funded the organisation works. Rather than focusing on share price and profits, it's thinking we better spend the money we've got, or else somebody will take it away if we haven't spent it. Well, I was that person, I remember one year, we'd underspent budgets and someone at some stage said, you can roll it over to next year if you haven't underspent, because we didn't want to do that, waste money on things that work, necessarily what we wanted. And then I remember one year taking it all away and said, look, if we actually gave you all this money, we'd be bussed next year. So I took it away. And of course, all the executives went mad, but it was fine. But I think we'll be a shock to Matt Britton having spent his entire career in the commercial world that you come to a world and say, what you're saying is a million pounds, a lot of money, or not very much money. If you've got a wheelbarrow turning up once a year with three and a half billion in it, it doesn't seem like a lot of money. If you're working for shareholders and you're trying to make profits and returns and margins and so on, you suddenly see it in a very different way. Yeah, although I suspect at Google, they've been quite a watch with cash for a few years. But is there a conundrum here? Because I think we are all agreed on this. Don't kill the license fee unless you can think of something better than it. You probably won't. So you'll end up coming back to the license fee. So we certainly speak for me and Jimmy here. We believe deeply in the BBC public service broadcasting, publicly funded organization. And yet we are also all people from who've spent more of our career by far in the commercial world where you behave as commercial people do, trying to take out cost, increase margins, increase profit and so on. How do you, I don't know, how do you thread that needle between those two different? I think that's why you take people out of the commercial world at some stages and put them into the BBC. Yes. To do precisely that, to actually say, I mean, before, John Burt was the director general before me and he'd introduced what we'd introduced at London Weekend, which was total costing. I mean, produce a choice for the cost. Well, think back a few years earlier and nobody knew what anything cost. Well, that was both in ITV and BBC. I mean, I remember, I remember with Nick Elliott, who we were talking about earlier, who's head of drama, we commissioned Poirot and we didn't know how much it cost. I can't imagine while having scrutinized budgets in great detail. No, no, no, no. Nick was much more interested in the next day's lunch, wasn't he? Well, he was. But Poirot was a great commission. He was, yeah. And he should actually look at it now, years later, because of his time. When I was the head of television at ITV, I had a head of drama, so personally in the same role as Nick Elliott. And I pointed into the job. And a few, few months later, I remember saying to him, he's a very nice man. I remember saying to him, I've been looking at your expenses and I'm a bit worried about them. And he thought, oh, what do you mean you're worried about them? I said, I don't think you take enough people out to lunch. I think you need to be spending a bit more money because the business we're in here is persuading the best writers, the best producers that ITV is the place to come. If that means lunch at the IV, take them. That's changed. I mean, I remember in the 90s, there was, I think, ITV were doing murder on the Orient Express. Yes. I talked to a member of the crew working on it. He said, it's fantastic. The overtime, you know, the money, we're getting, he said, we've renamed it a slow fuck on the gravy train. But what's interesting is, but that was when the union still controlled ITV. Yes. The unions controlled. I remember when I was director of programs at TVS, we got the right to go on the boat that found the Titanic, right, which was a local ballad. But we could only put two, I think three people on the boat. So we put on a cameraman, a sound man, and a producer director who also asked all the questions. We then had to put an electrician in a hotel in New York where the boat would sail from for four weeks while they were out there, because that was what required. Well, this is kind of a union thing. Yes, it was union. And what you talk to kids today, they have no idea what that was like. I mean, I remember the first thing I ever did when I was a young researcher was I was picking up, helping, moving some furniture around a room, and it got blacked because it was a knacky job to move through. Oh, no. I remember once we were doing a show in the early 80s, and the bloke just held a white stick on the studio floor for about eight hours. And no one could work out what the hell he was doing. And then lunch was called, and I remember him saying, God, it's all go, isn't it? But it was, we sound like a bunch of old men. We are a bunch of old men. Great, we are a bunch of old men. We sound like a bunch of old men talking about that time. And of course, when we go, no one will remember it. But to be first at the BBC, I sat next to Jeremy Hunt once. I did this thing called the Richard Dunn Lecture at the Edinburgh Festival, and Mark Thompson did the MacTaggart bit later. I was the warm-up guy. And the gift was you had dinner afterwards with the culture secretary, was Jeremy Hunt. His view of the BBC, and that's how many years ago, is that, 15 years ago? He said, well, it's full of fat, isn't it? I said, it's absolutely not full of fat these days. I said, when I started, I produced a show called Smith and Jones, which his company was making. We weren't told the budget. I was a freelance producer, and Gareth Gwendolyn, who was there at comedy, said, why aren't you a staff member? I said, I want to do my next job at Channel 4. The world's changing. And he didn't, he said, I want Channel 4's here today, gone tomorrow. So we did the show. I wasn't told the budget. At the end of the shoot, in post-production, I got pulled in by a guy called Tony James, who was the manager of comedy. They couldn't call him the comedy manager. It sounded too rude. So I got pulled into the office with the BBC guy, and he says, how did it go? I said, it went really well, actually. He said, do you want to know what the budget was? I said, yeah, no one ever told me. He said, it was £500,000. Well, that was 1982, I think it was. So it was a lot of money. We had three-week shooting in South End. We had lots of cast members. It was a fantastic thing. He said, do you want to know how much he spent? I said, yeah, sure. He said, 1.5 million. I said, it doesn't sound very good, does it? He said, don't worry, I'm not here. You're not here. This conversation never happened. And that was then, that was 1982. But that wouldn't happen in a commercial. But now, no, but it wouldn't happen at the BBC now. What I'm saying is the BBC is very lean and mean. Is it lean and mean? I don't, you see, we were talking about this earlier. Oh, I think it's much more so. If you look at the statistics, the same number of people working at the BBC now, roughly, I don't think there are. You don't think there are. When I was there, there were 28,000. Well, I think it's about 22,000. But I think this is a product of a publicly funded organisation. But it's also about moving. I mean, remember, one of the things that came out of my time, apart from the iPlayer, we moved significantly later, but we planned it in time to move to Manchester. That's right, you did. And you had to take a lot of the production out of London, because it was ridiculous that a national broadcaster was spending so much. That's a political reason, not a financial reason. Oh, it wasn't a financial reason, it probably cost you more. But it meant you had to get different... Well, the research we did showed that the further north you went, the less popular the BBC was. And therefore, we took the decision that you had to change that and you had to get more northern voices on, you had to get more Scottish voices on, you had to get more Welsh voices on. And you did that by moving production. But there was no point moving the production that you as... If you were a controller of BBC One, had choices over. So you moved things like children's, where they commissioned themselves, you moved the whole department, you moved education, moved the whole department, they've got their own money, and they're now going to spend it in the north of England, rather than the south. That has been a long-term success story, because now so much brilliant drama, say, is made in Northern Ireland, or is made in Scotland. So that's like a marked intervention, that may have seemed a bit artificial when you began it. You're saying, you know, this programme has been running for donkeys years, is now made out of Glasgow or whatever. But I would argue that that's worked. And fundamentally, we have a less London-centric business. I think that's right. I remember sitting in a big staff conference at the BBC, and I sat at the table with a woman from BBC Birmingham, and she said to me, this is ridiculous how London bias this place is. So I said, you know, I agree with you. And she said, well, you're the director-general, why don't you do something about it? So you did. So I did. When you look back at your time at the BBC, I mean, you casually mentioned the iPlayer and moving to Salford. There were pretty huge game-changers for the BBC. The iPlayer could have been there two years ago, before it was. It could have got stuck in the governors who were obsessed about it. But the iPlayer... And it had a problem. It had a challenge of rights and things, because you were saying to producers, like you, Jimmy, you're saying, you know, you've given us rights to, let's say, put a programme out once and one repeat. Now we want to stick on an iPlayer where everybody can look at it for a year. Yeah, well, because it wasn't a year. I think it was a week or two weeks to start with. It was, yeah. It was a week. Yeah, but it crept up. Well, what happened? I got a phone call from a journalist one day and said, why did you choose a week? And I had no idea why I chose a week. So I phoned up Caroline Fairburn, who was head of strategy. I mean, I said, Caroline, why did we choose a week? And she couldn't remember why we chose a week. But it was about we thought we could get a week from the independent producers and the shareholders. Unthinkable today, obviously. Because you expect the programme to be there pretty much. Well, my grandchildren don't understand what linear television is. They've got no belief in it at all. But I remember we belliaked about that for ages. And that's the thing about when you were the director of general, you had a sense that you were on the side of the BBC, that you had the, you know, that there was a kind of, you were on the front foot. And my complaint sometimes about people who run the BBC, I sometimes say, I love the BBC, it needs protection, sometimes from the people who run it. Because I wish people were much more vocal in that, this is the BBC, we're good at what we do. And to get, I mean, there are, I can't think of many chief executives who, when they leave, have a demonstration on the streets of people saying, we don't want you to leave, most of them can't wait to see the back of them. So you did manage to get the BBC have a feel, like let's say people come to work for more than just a salary. They come for meaning and purpose. And you seem to give the people inside the BBC meaning and purpose. Well, what we also did at that time is anybody new who joined the BBC had to come to a session that we ran every month, just to say, this is the BBC. So in those days, we made sure they got, they got into the top of the pops and they got into it. Because we were trying, I thought, my view was, you have to get out of these people on and put them on your side before the cynics get out of them. We basically said to the staff, this is the BBC. This is great. And even though you're going to be this, you're on the HR department in Newcastle, you're part of this. And this is what's exciting about the BBC. But that's the thing is the idea, the idea that you give people purpose and meaning and why they're there is really important. And I think you did that brilliantly. I think, you know, you were and also you were a big character. And I think the business in general needs people who speak their minds. And and they people like to follow those people. Well, the other interesting things people often say to me, wasn't this a terrible job? You know, it's not a terrible job at all. It's a fascinating job. But you do know at some stage in this process, you're going to end up in a bust-up with the government of the day or with the Daily Mail or with the, you know, that is an inevitability. But I mean, I reckon I had the Daily Mail hating me from the day I got there. That's always a badge of honour. Yeah, I didn't mind that at all. It was only in the last year at a four that it got tough. Government left us alone by and large. You know, the old bit, but by and large, it was as you say, it was a Labour government at the time who believed in the BBC until we got into the Iraq war. And the Iraq war was bound to lead to some difficulties. Yeah, but then they got you, didn't they? I mean, and then they got me because the governor's lost their nerve. But the day after the hunting inquiry through the BBC under the bus, most of newspapers said it was a whitewash. In fact, the independent had a white page. Had a complete white page with whitewash written in the middle. Just whitewash. Which is pretty, pretty amazing. Well, remember when I wrote a book after I left, I found somewhat a senior person in the local party who... What's the book called, Grobe? We can give it a quick plug. I don't think so. I think it's... I found a Remainded copy in a market in Kampala. Oh, I'm sure. In Kampala. In Kampala. I bought it. I thought it was so amazing to find this in the middle of Kampala. Exactly. That I bought it and gave it to somebody. Fantastic. Yeah. Well, in the book, we wrote... One senior person in the local party went asked, they'd appointed Hutton and said, is he going to be OK? He said, yeah, we appointed the right judge. And I think that was exactly what they did. And we should have said, no, we're not happy with one judge. And they say the judiciary in this country is not political. Well, if you find the right person, it's always political. Well, Greg, it's been a real pleasure having you on this show. You are a legend. And thank you very much for coming on. Well, I've enjoyed it. And thank you for not asking about Scott Mills. Oh, no. Because I can't think of... I know nothing about Scott Mills. So that's interesting, because I don't know whether you get this. Maybe I get this. If there's a Scott Mills thing out there, I get a phone call from the Today program or from Five Live or whatever, because if you've worked at the BBC in a senior role, forever after, your mobile phone numbers on some sort of index somewhere. But what am I going to say if I... I've never met Scott Mills, by the way, and to wade into one of these scandals of the BBC, a total mugs game for my point of view. Of which you know nothing. But getting back to television, which is why we're here. I think what I'm taking away from you, Greg, which I'm so glad to hear and I so agree with is, if you've been lucky enough to have done one of those really senior roles at the BBC, you're much more senior than me. You were the director general. I was the contender of BBC One. It may have ended in tears, or it may have been difficult towards the end. You'll never, ever regret having done that job. It was a fantastic privilege to have done that job. And an enormous fun. And I had three years at the BBC, less than you, don't regret a minute of it. And I think Matt Britain will have a great time. That's all for this week. Thanks very much for listening. Huge thanks to Greg Dyke for being with us. Any questions about the world of television you've always wanted to ask, send them our way. We'd love to hear from you. You can send us an email or grab us on our socials. All the info is in the description. 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