Greg Dyke: Inside Story

The only way I can come to terms with the extraordinary events of the last 48 hours is to pay testimony to the vision and energy you have brought to the BBC. Men and women, even journalists, cried today. People came together and talked about their emotions, their fears, their frustrations all because the man who had embodied the hope, the vision, the pride they had begun to feel about the future of the organization had gone.

They came from all parts of the BBC and at all levels, all thanking me for changing the BBC. Well, all bar one. Amongst this great pile of e-mails my staff sifted out the only negative communication. It simply said:

Fuck off Dyke, I’m glad you are going, I never liked you anyway.

That same night some of the staff in Factual Programmes and Current Affairs began collecting money to pay for an advertisement in the DailyTelegraph to express their support. In twenty-four hours they collected twice as much as they needed, with all sorts of people contributing right across the BBC, from the lowest paid to the highest. Even people in the canteen who didn’t work for the BBC, and who earned very little money, contributed. The spare money, nearly £10,000, was given to a charity of my choice. The Telegraph carried a full-page advertisement with a heading ‘The Independence of the BBC’ followed by a paragraph explaining that it had been paid for by BBC staff. It then said:

Greg Dyke stood for brave, independent and rigorous BBC journalism that was fearless in its search for the truth. We are resolute that the BBC should not step back from its determination to investigate the facts in pursuit of the truth.

Through his passion and integrity Greg inspired us to make programmes of the highest quality and creativity.

We are dismayed by Greg’s departure, but we are determined to maintain his achievements and his vision for an independent organization that serves the public above all else.

The page included just some of the thousands of names of BBC staff who had paid for the advertisement. They couldn’t get all the names on the page. When I read it, I think it was the only time during the whole saga that I broke down and cried.

As I left Broadcasting House for the final time it seemed like everyone working there had come down to cheer me off. My own office staff all came out to the car: Fiona, Emma, Magnus, Orla, and Cheryl were all there to wave me goodbye, plus virtually the whole of the marketing department. I did a couple more quick interviews and in the middle of being interviewed live on Sky News my mobile phone rang. I answered it to find David Frost on the other end, so I offered him the opportunity to speak live to the world on Sky News. I don’t think he quite understood what was happening.

And then I was gone. Four years to the very day that I had become Director-General I was driven away for the last time.

That evening Sue (who had driven back from Suffolk just for the night), Joe, and I went out for dinner. I think we were all on a strange high, laughing and joking. We ended up round the corner with our good friends John Stapleton and Lynn Faulds Wood, where I promised to do a live phone interview for John’s early morning programme on GMTV the following day. I decided then that I would only do three interviews: with John, because he’s a good friend; with the Today programme the following morning, when I could put on record what I was feeling; and with David Frost on Sunday, again repaying the support and friendship that he and his wife Carina had shown Sue and me over the years.

For the Today interview, which I fixed up at about four in the morning, I suggested they send the radio car round to my house. When they turned up a BBC News television crew was already there so I thought I’d make everyone a cup of tea. It is ironic that, after three days of avoiding journalists and news crews outside the house, the pictures of me carrying out the tea for the crews is one of the memorable shots of the whole affair. Virtually everyone I know saw it and mentions it when we meet. I also know that the pictures caused great consternation inside 10 Downing Street. Who says there’s no such thing as news management?

It was three days before I began to realize that perhaps all was not as it had seemed to be. The idea came to me when I was talking to someone from within the BBC who told me that she believed some of the Governors had been out to get me regardless of Hutton. It got me thinking: did some of the Governors have another agenda?

By then I knew that three of the eleven Governors had supported me in the crunch vote: the ballet dancer Deborah Bull, the Oxford academic Ruth Deech and voluntary sector consultant Angela Sarkis were all against my leaving. They were the three Governors who had most recently joined the Board. The ‘posh ladies’ had both been against me and Sarah Hogg, in particular, had led the charge. She had told the Board that she had never liked me.

I was surprised when I discovered that I had not received any support from the Governors representing Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and the English regions. If I had achieved one thing in my time at the BBC it was to increase investment and improve morale outside of London, and yet when the crunch came the Governors with particular responsibility for the Nations and Regions had all voted against me.

Not that they were ever the strongest of Governors. Three of them – Ranjit Sondhi, Fabian Monds, and Merfyn Jones – had said very little over the years. It always seemed to me that they were intimidated by the posh ladies. In the case of Ranjit, I understand he was in real trouble when he got home. His wife, Anita Bhalla, who works for the BBC as Head of Political and Community Affairs for the English Regions, was a big Dyke supporter and, reportedly, tore him to shreds for going along with the decision. Ranjit was a really likeable, incredibly hard-working Governor, but he was never likely to rock the boat about anything.

Only Robert Smith, an accountant and business leader from Scotland, had played a significant role at Governors’ meetings in my time, and it was always difficult to judge where he was coming from. At that time we all knew he was after a big new job as chairman of a major public company, and like so many accountants he loved to look tough if the opportunity presented itself.

I began to think about the conversation Gavyn, Pauline Neville-Jones, and I had had the night before Hutton was published. Surely if Pauline had said that she thought it was impossible for Gavyn and me to leave at the same time, shouldn’t she have been arguing on my behalf, given that Gavyn had already gone? And yet she hadn’t stood up for me and had in fact voted the other way. I began to think some more.

Pauline Neville-Jones had always been a big supporter of Mark Byford. As the Governor with special responsibility for the World Service she had worked closely with him and clearly rated him highly. I suspect she also liked him because, like most of the BBC lifers, he was better at the politics of dealing with the Governors, better at playing the game of being respectful. It was a game that I refused to play. I saw no reason why I should treat the Governors any differently from the way I treated everyone else. I certainly wasn’t going to regard the earth they walked on as if it was somehow holy ground. This wasn’t a wilful decision. It was just the way I am.

After I had left the BBC one senior executive said to me that if I had been a bit more servile in my attitude to the Governors I would still be there today. I have no doubt that’s true. Certainly both chairmen in my time at the BBC, Christopher Bland and Gavyn Davies, suggested on occasions that I ought to be more respectful and make fewer jokes at Governors’ meetings, but in truth I was never going to do that. I have never been one to respect position for its own sake and I was hardly likely to start in my fifties, particularly when dealing with a group of people most of whom knew absolutely nothing about the media, and who would have struggled to get a senior job at the BBC. In my time there were some excellent Governors, people like Richard Eyre and Barbara Young who had been on the Board when I joined, but I was not a fan of the system and made that obvious at times.

Whether this attitude to life is a weakness or a strength (and I suspect it is a bit of both) is largely irrelevant. That’s the way my DNA is. I’m not particularly good at watching my back, and never have been. If you employ me you have to take me for what I am. In the commercial world that’s not a problem because you are largely judged on the numbers. In the public sector, where accountability has become an obsession, you are judged on the strangest things, including how well you get on with the great and the good.

So why hadn’t Pauline Neville-Jones supported me as I thought she would? Again I thought back a few months. One day in early December 2003, at our regular weekly meeting, Gavyn Davies told me that Pauline and Sarah Hogg had been to see him and were demanding that he call a meeting of the Governors without me being present so that they could appoint Mark Byford as my deputy and put him in charge of all the BBC’s news output. I would then be told it was a fait accompli.

I laughed and told him that if they did that, then I would resign immediately. Gavyn told me that they were serious and were demanding he call the meeting. He asked me what he should do about it. I started by telling him that it was his problem but later said I’d think about it.

I’m certain Mark Byford didn’t know anything about this move; in his time working for me Mark was always loyal and supportive. In many ways the proposal for Mark to become my deputy was a good idea. I had never had an official number two but Mark acted as my deputy, if he was around, when I was away and in fact I had suggested the move to Gavyn myself earlier that year. Mark had real strengths, many of which complemented mine. I tended to be broad brush, he was into detail. I was into big decisions and taking risks, whilst Mark, like many of the senior people who had worked their whole life at the BBC, tended to be cautious and process driven. We would have been a good fit. Gavyn was against it at that stage because it would have indicated that Mark was the Board’s chosen successor to me when the time came for me to leave in three years’ time when I reached the age of sixty.

My objection to the proposal from the posh ladies was, firstly, the way they were going about it by going behind my back; secondly, that it was nothing to do with them, that I was the DG and would suggest who my deputy should be, not them; and, thirdly, that they wanted to put Mark in charge of all the BBC’s news output, thus effectively demoting the Director of News, Richard Sambrook. I was having none of that. However, with the Hutton report pending, even someone as naturally combative as me recognized that this was not a time for a big bust-up with the Governors and I had reached the conclusion we needed a change to the organization.

As Hutton had progressed, I had come to the view that our systems of compliance prior to and post broadcast needed to be brought together under one person, so I suggested to Gavyn that, as a way of appeasing the posh ladies, we should appoint Mark as my deputy and allow him to remain in charge of Global News but also take over all our compliance systems.

Gavyn took this proposal to the Governors and they agreed. The posh ladies seemed satisfied. On 1 January 2004, Mark Byford officially became my deputy. A month later I was gone and he was acting Director-General.

In the week after leaving I also discovered more about what had happened at that private Governors’ meeting on the previous Wednesday. When I had left the meeting with Gavyn I had asked the Secretary, Simon Milner, to tell the Governors that I wanted their support if I was to stay. I later discovered he told them that I had resigned, a subtle but crucial difference. Of course Pauline Neville-Jones knew that wasn’t what we had discussed the night before, so why didn’t she question it? I also discovered that, later in the meeting, when they were discussing whether or not they should change their position on my going, Simon had intervened to say that it was a bad idea because they’d never be able to control me if that happened.

The week after my departure I discovered the Governors were having a secret meeting to review what had happened the week before. Sitting at home unemployed, I decided that there were things I wanted them to know. I phoned Simon Milner and told him I wanted to e-mail the Governors to tell them about the conversation Pauline Neville-Jones, Gavyn, and I had had the night before the crucial meeting. I suggested they might consider it odd that Pauline had neither mentioned the conversation to them nor carried out what was agreed. I told them they should consult Gavyn for corroboration. It seemed to me important that they should understand the background to Gavyn’s rapid departure and my surprise at the Governors’ lack of support. Simon asked me what I wanted. Tongue in cheek, I told him I wanted my job back. What I really wanted was to make sure they all knew exactly how Pauline Neville-Jones had behaved.

The nature of my departure hit a nerve with the public. For a few weeks I became something of a hero in many people’s eyes. They thought I had been badly treated and yet I must be a good bloke because why else would so many of the BBC’s employees come out on my side? Of course I was helped by Alastair Campbell’s performance on the day the Hutton report was published.

Standing on the stairs at the Foreign Press Association, Campbell gave about as pompous a performance as it’s possible to imagine. For a man who was known to be economical with the truth, and who had certainly deliberately misled the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee during their Iraq hearings, he said that the Government had told the truth and that the BBC, from the Chairman and Director-General down, had not. He then called for heads to roll at the BBC.

Campbell is a man who has the ability to delude himself. He didn’t realize how much he was disliked and distrusted by the British public, who saw him as Blair’s Svengali. He believed throughout that he was right, and he now believed Hutton was right. The British public didn’t. In attacking Gavyn and me he helped to put the public even further on our side. When asked about his response on the Today programme I said I thought that Campbell was ‘remarkably graceless’. What I really felt was that he was a deranged, vindictive bastard, but I couldn’t possibly say that on the radio.

The emotional response to my dismissal was not only from the staff. I received letters from all over Britain and all over the world – from people I’d never met, from people I’d met only occasionally, and from good friends. Everywhere I went people wanted to shake my hand: in the pub, in the supermarket, walking down the street, even at football matches. Sue and I went for dinner with Melvyn and his wife Cate in the House of Lords the following week and all sorts of people wanted to say hello and that they were sorry about what had happened. One Liberal Democrat peer, an eminent lawyer, offered to take up my case against Hutton, whilst a prominent Tory peer offered to help pay for me to go to law. So many peers from all parties came up that Melvyn described it as ‘a royal procession’.

I even got a message from my architect friend Chris Henderson, with whom I go riding every weekend, to say that the Hursley and Hambledon Hunt was 100 per cent behind me. I was eternally grateful – not that it will change my views about fox hunting. Even Ian, who cuts my hair, told me all his clients were on my side, with the exception of one. He also cuts the hair of the former Director-General of the BBC, John Birt.

Two weeks after I left the BBC we went with the Stapleton family to South Africa for a holiday and I met the same reaction there. Dozens of British tourists recognized me and wanted to shake my hand and say they thought I’d been treated badly and ‘well done’ for standing up to the Government. The funniest moment came when I was standing in the sea and a large tattooed man came up to me. ‘Well done, mate,’ he said. ‘They’re all fucking bastards.’ And off he wandered into the deep.

Inside the television industry the reaction was the same. At the Royal Television Society’s annual awards ceremony I was given a long standing ovation when I was presented with the annual judges’ award for my contribution to television. The same happened a month later at the annual BAFTA awards, which were televised on ITV. First Paul Abbott, the brilliant writer of Clocking Off and State of Play, attacked the BBC Governors for getting rid of me, then I was given a standing ovation when I went up to present the award for best current affairs programme. I used the opportunity to have my first public dig at the BBC Governors.

Months after I had left the BBC all sorts of people I didn’t know were still coming up to me saying they were sorry that ‘they’ had got me. So what was all this about, and who did they mean by ‘they’? I can only presume they were talking about Blair, Campbell, and those around them, combined in their minds with Lord Hutton and the BBC Governors. To all these well-wishers, I was someone prepared to stand up against ‘them’.

I even became a phenomenon amongst the business community. People from business schools all over the world were in contact. Every leader of an organization would like to think that if they were fired their people would take to the streets to support them, but most knew they wouldn’t, so they were intrigued to know what had happened and why. It was best summed up for me by a wonderful old man called Herb Schlosser, who was once President and CEO of NBC in the United States. He wrote, ‘I saw on the internet BBC employees marching in support of a CEO. This is a first in the history of the Western World.’

And that was about the end of it. From the most powerful media job in the UK to unemployed in just three days. It was a remarkable period, but what were those crazy three days all about? Why did the Governors do what they did?

When you combine the unpredicted savagery of the Hutton Report towards the BBC, the whitewashing of Number Ten, Gavyn’s early resignation, Pauline Neville-Jones’s astonishing behaviour, the posh ladies’ hostility towards me, their influence on a relatively weak Board, Richard Ryder’s ineffectiveness as a leader, and my natural assumption that the majority of the Governors would want me to stay, you can understand what happened and why. Of course I was not without blame. I had made mistakes in how we dealt with the whole affair, and in those dying days I shouldn’t have said I needed the Governors’ support to stay. I certainly shouldn’t have believed I would get it. I trusted certain people who were not to be trusted. In many ways it was a very British coup in which the Establishment figures got their opportunity to get rid of the upstart.

There are still questions to be answered. Why did Hutton write the report he wrote? Why did the British people reject Hutton out of hand, and so quickly? Why did it damage the Government instead of helping it? And why did people in the wider world sympathize so strongly with my position?

Why did my leaving create such a response inside the BBC? Why wasn’t I perceived as just another suit, as most managers are? What had we done to the culture of the BBC in such a short period of time that provoked such emotion and such loyalty?

As one letter I received from within the BBC said so profoundly, ‘How did a short, bald man with a speech impediment have such an impact?’ I hope this book will go some way towards answering that question.

CHAPTER TWO The First Thirty Years (#ulink_969ce15f-bd12-5c17-8459-878a50ce51cf)

Every so often I try to explain to my own kids what life was like growing up in a small West London suburban street in the 1950s, but I only get mocked for my efforts. I think they laugh because I make it sound too much like the Hovis advertisement where everyone was poor but happy, and the luxuries we aspired to were very simple.

We lived, for the first nine years of my life, in a very ordinary cul-de-sac on the borders between Hayes and Southall in Middlesex. My parents Joseph and Denise bought the house, a new, small suburban semi in a street called Cerne Close, in 1946 for £650. Today it would sell for close to £250,000. They moved there with my brothers Ian, then aged five, and Howard, who was only a few months old. I was born the following year in 1947, a year when there were more births in Britain than in any other year in history. It was the peak of the post-war baby boom with a million children born compared with an average of 600,000 a year today.

The reality was that most people did live very simple lives, compared with today. It’s when I tell my kids that the milk was still delivered by horse and cart that they laugh. We walked to school in a big crowd – just kids, without any parents to escort us – and we all played football in the street with a tennis ball. No one in the street was divorced, and virtually all the children lived with two parents in a classic nuclear family, often with a grandparent in tow. Dad went out to work and Mum stayed behind to look after the children and the home. It was as simple as that.

My dad’s job was selling insurance; as a result we were one of only two families in the street with a car, owned by his company, so we were seen as quite affluent. We also had a telephone for the same reason and neighbours used regularly to knock on the door to ask if they could come in and use the phone.

We were luckier than most of the people in our street as we had at least three holidays each year. Every summer we stayed in a bungalow on the beach at Pevensey Bay in East Sussex, where the big treat of the week was a trip on a boat called the William Olchorn, which took holidaymakers out on trips around Beachy Head lighthouse. On the way back to the bungalow we would all have fish and chips, which we saw as something special. Every Easter we stayed for a week with my parents’ best friends, Uncle Frank and Auntie Vi, in Bridgend in South Wales, and at Whitsun we stayed with ‘Auntie’ Edna and ‘Uncle’ Bill in Emneth near Wisbech in Cambridgeshire, where my Auntie Doreen was evacuated during the war; she was joined by my mum and my brother Ian towards the end of the war after their house in Bromley, Kent, had been bombed.

The years we lived in that little street in Hayes were happy times. No one was well off, but neither were they poor. We all had food and clothes, and life was uncomplicated by the choices that greater affluence has brought. I suspect it was also pretty dull, but as a child you didn’t know that.