Samir Shah, under-attack chairman of the even-more-in-the-mire BBC, tiptoed into the Commons culture committee. This natty, gnomic figure, dapper and discursive, speaks in a voice that is ever so slightly elusive, as if he hasn’t put his teeth in right.
Everyone calls him ‘Dr Shah’. He is not a medic, even if his fastidious manner calls to mind a posh chiropodist. Give him a bow tie and a pair of latex gloves and he could set up shop on Harley Street, cooing over the tootsies of Knightsbridge widows.
Encountering Dr Shah, one must resist the urge to whip off one’s socks and ask for a second opinion on troublesome bunions.
The BBC is in trouble for ignoring hideous journalistic scandals. These led to the threat of a $5billion writ from D. Trump and saw daylight only when a memo from Michael Prescott, former external adviser to the BBC’s editorial standards committee, was leaked to the Press.
Mr Prescott and one of his colleagues, a gluey ex-FT bluestocking called Caroline Daniel, spoke to MPs just before Dr Shah arrived for his consultation.
Ms Daniel, an almost perfect Establishment specimen, talked of ‘challenging issues’ and ‘important pieces of work’ and ‘deep dives’.
We had ‘deep dives’ so often, she should have been in a Jacques Cousteau documentary. With her instinctive forgiveness of the Blob, she’ll be governor of the Bank of England soon.
Mr Prescott was asked for his leanings. ‘I’m a Centrist Dad,’ he said. Indeed, he wore one of those thread bracelets, a swanky wristwatch, no tie and looked as if he was just back from a weekend in Tignes. The Labour-dominated committee had suspected him of being, basically, a Nigel Farage plant.
The man who told the truth about the Lefty BBC. Appalling!!! But here he was saying he was of the same political kidney as most of them.
Apretty pathetic committee was enlivened only by daft old Rupa Huq (Lab, Ealing C) and a shaven-headed Lib Dem from Tewkesbury, Cameron Thomas, who fancied himself a tough guy. His skull muscles twitched. If the furtive moustache and bitten fingernails lent him the air of a Bosnian-Serb desperado from 1914, that was spoiled by his habit of raising a hand in the air every time he wished to speak. A primary school assassin.
Mr Prescott, ‘taking absolutely no pleasure’ in the resignations of top Beeboids, said: ‘I might go so far as to say that I love the BBC.’ One of the committee’s clerks gazed at the ceiling, laughing.
Damian Hinds (Con, East Hants) wondered if the BBC had ‘a bigger truth problem’. Mr Prescott felt it merely had ‘a curious management blindspot’ about indefensible journalistic practices. Spot the difference.
Labour MPs complained that the scandal had been ‘weaponised’ by the Right. Politicians who use the verb ‘weaponised’ are themselves, by and large, being partisan.
Enter Dr Shah.
Once the committee had put its shoes back on, the little chap said he regretted the journalistic errors made. ‘I don’t think the DG should have resigned,’ he murmured – of Tim Davie’s exit as BBC director-general – with all the penetration of a podiatrist doubting some treatment for an unusually nasty case of athlete’s foot.
He was so verbose that one started to wonder if he was a doctor of flummery. An obfuscationologist. He confessed that BBC corporate statements could be ‘rather vanilla’. The Beeb’s PR man looked delighted by this.
To one side of Shah sat Caroline Thomson, aka Lady Liddle and friend of Peter Mandelson, the senior BBC non-executive governor. She listened to the good doctor’s windbaggery with eyes closed, as if savouring the work of a maestro.
On Shah’s other side sat Theresa May’s former head of communications, Robbie Gibb, who is also on the BBC board and has been accused of arranging an attempted ‘coup’ with his friend Prescott.
Ms Huq undermined Leftist attempts to portray this cosiness by trilling that she hadn’t seen Dr Shah since some drinks party. ‘And congratulations on your knighthood, Robbie,’ she gassed.
If I were Trump, I’d ask for $15 billion.
