It’s tempting to say of Greg Dyke: hoist with his own petard.
The former Director General who once complained that the BBC was ‘hideously
white’, is now at risk of a white-out. The only man ever to put a Rat (Roland) on a sinking ship (TV AM: he turned it
round and made a tidy profit), may be pushed out of his nearly new role as chair of the
Football Association (FA) after complaints about his hideously white appointees
to the FA Commission on the future of the English game.
In an open letter to
his chief critic, ‘Greg’ (just don’t call me ‘Gregory’) even cites his ‘hideously
white’ comment as proof of his bona
fides.
Greg – I know you won’t mind me calling you that, 'cos that’s
the down to earth guy you are – have you never heard the saying: ‘those who
live in glass houses’? Just glance at a looking-glass…..
But if it’s easy to have a go at Greg for being right-on,
man of the people, down with the black and ethnic minority communities – only
to have it blow back in his hideously white face, it’s hard to accept that this
is what became of the generation which saw television as a genuinely popular medium;
the people’s window on the world.
Their rise was imbued with widespread hope
for the extension of social democracy; their demise represents its dramatic contraction.
Black and white David Frost, close-cropped hair and skinny
ties, in the 1960s the most intelligent man in TV. Greg Dyke’s seven-year
ascent from junior researcher to head of London Weekend Television, delivering
entertainment and current affairs in full 1970s colour: not bad for a
Whispering Bob Harris lookalike.
Intelligence was everything – among these broadcasters but
also on the part of the audience they were broadcasting to. Patronising – a
whole way of life for their successors – is just what they didn’t do.
Whether Dyke resigns now or in a couple of years, it’s sad
to see his generation going down and out.
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