Why Dyke didn't 'watch his back'

Nick Horton
BBC News website

Greg Dyke signs his autobiography after speaking at Hay

Greg Dyke is a star attraction at the Hay Festival and, for a "short, bald guy with a speech impediment" (his own description), it's easy to see why.

He has had, to put it mildly, an interesting few years since becoming director general of the BBC in 2000.

He was as brutal about those he blames for his downfall four years later as he says they were towards him and the BBC.

He was particularly scathing about Tony Blair, the prime minister's former aide Alastair Campbell, and the cabinet.

I'm that sort of person. I'm always amazed when things go wrong Greg Dyke

But he was also very funny and candid about his own failure to come to terms with the culture of the broadcaster he took over.

Promoting his autobiography, Inside Story, he recalled how he was advised by two chairmen of the BBC to stop making jokes because the board of governors "take themselves terribly seriously".

A friend writing a book has told him he has four of the five necessary leadership qualities. The one missing was "watch your back".

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But he asked the Hay audience: "If you had to do that, how could you perform the others?"

He admitted: "I never understood the politics of the BBC. I didn't understand it when I left."

Weather the storm

Mr Dyke left the BBC after the Hutton report into the death of the Iraq weapons expert David Kelly. In his statement at the time, Mr Dyke said he had resigned, but he told the Hay audience that he had been sacked.

He believed the BBC would receive "a lot of flak" in the report, "but I never thought I couldn't weather the storm.

"But I'm that sort of person. I'm always amazed when things go wrong."

It's a government that's completely dominated by how it's perceived the next day Greg Dyke on New Labour

He said he believed Mr Campbell - then the government's director of communications - had "lost it" during the row over the BBC's reporting of Iraq.

Mr Dyke donated money to Labour before he became head of the BBC, but supported the Liberal Democrats at the recent election. He described New Labour as "a PR exercise, and that's the tragedy of it".

"They went out and polled everyone on the things people like and they put it into the programme. But nowhere did they say 'how do we do this?' "

He said the cabinet was "supine", adding: "It's a government that's completely dominated by how it's perceived the next day."

When he resigned, many BBC staff stopped work in protest, and he quoted the message he had from a senior American broadcasting executive.

"He said, 'Greg, I just wanted to let you know, this is a first for the western world. It's the first time the workers have walked out because the boss has been sacked."

Mr Dyke also received 6,000 e-mails from BBC staff, almost all of them supportive, which were later bound and presented to him.

All except one, however, he recalled. "One guy wrote, '---- off Dyke, I never liked you anyway,' " he laughed. "He wouldn't have said that the day before, though."