Greg Dyke: Facing the music

Dyke has been an outspoken director general

Sometimes it seems the BBC, "Auntie" as it was popularly known to a past tabloid generation, is everyone's Aunt Sally.

Rarely has the corporation felt as embattled as over the Hutton inquiry investigating the circumstances leading to the death of weapons expert Dr David Kelly.

And director general Greg Dyke may face his sternest test yet when he is called to give his version of events.

The animosity between Tony Blair's government and the BBC must have seemed unlikely to the Conservative spokesmen who objected to the appointment of Dyke and the BBC chairman, Gavyn Davies, on the grounds that their previous sympathies would mean an inevitable pro-Labour bias.

That accusation has evaporated, but Dyke has had to fend off plenty of others, about "dumbing-down" and the cost of digital television, for instance.

Greg Dyke's appointment, five years after he suggested the job was more likely to be offered to Saddam Hussein, was a marked departure from conventional wisdom at London's Broadcasting House.

Organising rebellion

After all, 20 attempts to secure a reporter's job had ended in disappointment and Marks and Spencer had dispensed with Dyke's services as a trainee manager after four months.

He left Hayes Grammar School with one A-level, in mathematics, and after persuading the Hillingdon Mirror to take him on as a trainee reporter, he showed his gratitude by organising a rebellion of the poorly-paid juniors who were virtually running the paper.

After graduating from York University as a mature student, Greg Dyke secured perhaps his most important break by setting foot on the first rung of the ladder at London Weekend Television, as a researcher.

At 30, he was unusually old for the post, but those who knew him were not surprised at his subsequent success.

Glove puppet

The Times media editor, Ray Snoddy, who was a trainee journalist with Dyke, said: "Greg is genuinely personable, very funny and a cheeky chappy. But he is also fast on his feet and can be very tough."

Television proved to be Dyke's true metier. At LWT, he championed such winners as Blind Date and London's Burning, dismissing the sneers of "intellectual newspapers".

Two unrelated events made 1983 a hugely-significant year for Dyke. He met his second wife, Susan Howes, with whom he was to have a daughter and a son. And he came to national prominence through a hunch a glove puppet could deliver a kiss of life to the ailing TV-am company.

He did not introduce Roland Rat, but it was Dyke who decided to promote Roland from a bit part to a star of the breakfast franchise. It seemed unlikely, but his instinct was sound and viewing figures soared.

'Hideously white'

But then he is renowned for keeping his eye on the ball, whether playing football - although he is now 56 - or the stock market, where his ventures helped to make him a wealthy man.

Perhaps his eye has not been as reliable at the Dartmouth Golf and Country Club, where members swear most of the balls fished out of the lake are his.

As expected, Dyke has been an outspoken director general. In 2001, he described the corporation management as "hideously white". The following year, he famously told his staff to "cut the crap" and take risks to stimulate innovation and creativity.

And this year, he said the BBC should "probably" have made Big Brother and needed to get rid of its image as "a south of England, middle-class institution".