YOU may, just, recall a once-esteemed ex-BBC journalist by the name of John Sweeney. He was Panorama/Newsnight’s investigative Sir Lancelot of his day – sort of. Allow me to explain.
I write this on the heels of news that the BBC is to cut some 2,000 jobs, or 10 per cent of the workforce. It’s not before time, most will agree, but it matters where that axe falls. Sweeney’s career axe fell shortly after I got a phone call one sunny morning in Long Beach, California. It was from a laughing Tommy Robinson, who played me a covertly recorded clip of an expenses-drunk Sweeney discussing his first meeting with me.
It was in Broadcasting House’s ‘Green Room’ where guests on live news programmes gather before and after their appearances. I did quite a few Newsnight shows, especially in the post-Brexit days when their producers enjoyed feeding a willing middle-aged Brexiteer with a broad Yorkshire accent to their woke mainstream. If I’m no kind of a Lancelot, I could at least qualify as a windmill-tilting Don Quixote and, as a Yorkshireman, how could I say no to free first class travel to London, a hotel room and couple of hundred quid in the back pocket?
This would be an early appearance. Sweeney was featuring in a different segment of Newsnight but lingered in the Green Room afterwards and swiftly introduced himself. Kirsty Wark (I think) politely chatted then departed. Our paths hadn’t previously crossed but Sweeney and I were of a similar journalistic generation and had plenty of mutual acquaintances. He was pleasantness personified, especially as the stacked Green Room fridge had no bottle-opener and I promptly displayed one of my many rugby-days party tricks. A few beers and all very hail-fellow-well-met. All BBC hypocrisy with bells on, as I was soon to realise.
That Long Beach morning, after hearing Sweeney’s insulting comments about the Green Room meeting with this northern oik (like ‘meeting something Amazonian . . . or from outer space’ – I can’t be bothered looking it up) I rang his news producer boss and asked for his phone number. ‘Why?’ I was asked. ‘Because he’s going to get a slap from me next time I see him,’ I replied. The offer stands.
Sweeney’s self-imposed retribution was actually far more swiftly and painfully on its way. Those comments about me were made during his attempts to recruit a former Tommy Robinson employee and backfired spectacularly. He wined, wined, cocktailed and dined her, twisted her comments into potential (untrue) possible interpretations and even came out with his own racist/misogynistic comments. All caught on film. Gotcha!
I’ve previously reported the magnificent scene when instead of the planned BBC right-of-reply, Tommy ambushed the entire Panorama production team with the covert footage. A week later he delivered his own ‘Panodrama’ expose of the deceitful depths the BBC will go to, in front of a huge crowd outside their studios in Salford Quays. No, of course you didn’t see that on the BBC news. Any news. Derrr!
Sweeney hasn’t worked for a legitimate news provider that I’m aware of since. Certainly whatever reputational crown he once wore now hangs somewhere by his ankles.
My own gleeful memories of the cold justice served to John Sweeney aside (and this was seven years ago), it remains emblematic of the depths to which the BBC has sunk, because if the BBC isn’t at its core about news, trust and honesty, what is it about? These possible 2,000 redundancies aren’t going to affect the social anaesthesia that BBC ‘entertainment’ delivers on a mundane daily basis to the nation’s elderly care-home audiences. That’s mostly outsourced to third-party producers.
So where will it strike? The cynic in me doubts that it will swing a scythe through the organisation’s bulging DEI department. All those years ago, you walked into Broadcasting House reception to look up at TV screens telling you how many gender varieties were at work today. The only thing I could say with any amount of certainty about our Green Room host/ess/it that particular evening was that they looked like they hadn’t smiled since mum took off their first nappy.
So, Auntie Beeb, who are the losers? Here’s my guess. It won’t be woke executives, talentless talent-spotters, mid-management ‘news’ curators or anyone gay, bi, trans or confused-dot-com and almost certainly not anyone non-white. I reckon a Welsh, Scottish or Nor’n Irish accent might even suffice as protection.
No. It will probably be the quietly ambitious ordinaries who worked their socks off, thinking they were joining a broadcasting flagship, a national jewel, only to find themselves trapped in a horror sitcom that no one dares cancel. Tick-tock, Auntie Beeb, tick-tock.
