Well, curious thing, extraordinary, the whips suddenly find that they need Simpson for all these vote thingies! Poor old Alan finally got on, puffing, with only minutes left. Poor show, eh, Captain? Oh, and we’re all very happy here because we’ve just heard that lovely Peter Mandelson, the rich man’s Fraser Kemp, will be going to the Dome on Millennium Night after all. Bye!” My, but it’s exciting down at Westminster, isn’t it? Next!FANTASTIQUE! That would, probably, be a French reader’s reaction to my acclaimed Moonlight Miscellany, a flambe of fascination, a souffle of snippets, a marmite of marvels And, first, that bus stop It is in Shetland, in Baltasound. I am told that it might possibly be the most northerly bus stop in Britain.

No, I don’t know why it contains a sofa, a television, and some plastic vegetables. Meanwhile, better news of probably the least-used bus stop in Britain, near Lewes. I had a photograph of it, you will recall,which went mysteriously missing, no doubt snatched by a jealous rival. But now Ms Swann MBH (Moonlight Badge Holder) of Newhaven, has volunteered to send her husband Charles off on his bicycle to take a new shot of it. God speed, Mr Swann! Next, three members of an all-girl chapter of Hell’s Angels are suing Dennis Laroux, 49, after he tattooed “Stan’s Slaves” on their breasts rather than Satan’s Slaves. Next, your next comp, if you should choose to accept it: apparently, there’s some popular record out at the moment full of sound advice on Life Yours, please, in a sentence, Moonlight Badges on offer. Finally, just before I left for the country, I asked our boffins here to brighten up my image with some of that technical trickery which helped the royal family out so much at the lovely wedding.

How’s it gone? Bye!JOY! BBC staff (including, out of picture, left, Mr Alan Yentob) congratulating Sir Christopher Bland, the chairman, on the choice of next DG, Mr Gregory Dyke. No? All right, it’s the Society of Auctioneers’ summer party. Mr Piers Veneer, president, has just mimed a man with a bad facial tic. No? All right, it’s the Portuguese president, Jorge Sampaio, under playful attack at an Oporto fiesta. Is it me, by the way, or does he look a little like Roger Moore?. Perhaps Greg Dyke will get the BBC on message It would be no bad thing.

The Great Organisation is confused: it has a problem telling its left hand from its right. Four things happen within 48 hours: a) a brave annual governors’ report announces a major shift of policy – the BBC must “dare to be different” and “unashamedly” pursue the public good rather than ratings; b) it is revealed that Question Time has asked Elton John, Elizabeth Hurley and their like to come on the show; c) Alan Yentob, the BBC’s director of television, says the corporation is to begin the move towards “braining up”; and d) Greg Dyke, who once saved TV-am by bringing on Roland Rat, is appointed as director-general. Things have come to a pretty pass when the governors have to feel “unashamed” about suggesting that the publicly funded BBC should perform a public service; and when Question Time is desperate because its usual guests, chosen as they are in the interests of “balance”, have been so trained by their political parties they can spout only platitudes, and its audience – among the most faithful and intelligent in all TV – begins to drift away yawning.
BBC programmes, alas, now serve the institution, not the institution the programmes. The ratings-chasing culture is so well established, the fear of being accused of elitism so great, the reliance on committee rather than individual judgment so omnipresent, the habit of spending money on anything, anything other than the programmes themselves (new buildings, digitisation, personal development weekends, new tiers of middle management) so deep rooted, that “braining up” will be as difficult as trying to make a giant oil tanker stop in mid-ocean.But Greg Dyke might do it At least he puts his money where his mouth is. He has nothing to prove other than his capacity for impartiality. Where are you going to find an effective, thinking man without political affiliation? Why try? By all accounts Mr Dyke is no bureaucrat.