A love letter

Last week, after nearly eight years, I left the BBC (I started at WaterAid on Monday). What follows here is my love letter to the Corporation. It's not a technical argument for it, though I am happy to have that argument (if increasingly sceptical of its value) nor any kind of defence of some of our unsavoury employees anymore than it is a tribute to the wonderful colleagues I have left. This is simply my farewell. It does of course repeat many of the things I said at my leaving drinks so isn't worth reading if you were there.

I shall miss the BBC terribly. I've been lucky enough to work across almost all of it, though I've seen some bits more closely than others. And I loved it because I got to defend things I loved. 

My affection for those things is deep rooted. When I think about the BBC, it comes saturated with memory. So saturated that some of those memories come from a time before I was born. I remember being played classic radio comedy as a child from the 1960s, so that I can still recite sketches from Round the Horne (e.g.,) and I'm sorry I'll read that again. I'm not alone in this - think of the Dr Who fanatics younger than me who can go back to the same decade. As a twelve year old, I fell asleep to the 1992 election coverage on Radio 4 amid the glimmerings of the great victory. Obviously I woke up the following morning to Today, but I've done that since the age of about eleven. About the same time, my whole family always watched Noel's House Party. I still have an enormous soft spot for Mr Blobby. (This, with Will Carling, is objectively brilliant)

So far, I've got to about 1992 and the list could roll on and on, but there are plenty of more comprehensive lists out there. My own consumption has waxed and waned over the years in entirely predictable ways - when I watched Benedict Cumberbatch play Stephen Hawking in 2004 I was watching very little, but it was still one of the most extraordinary pieces of television I have ever seen. My current favourites are shaped by my child centred timetable and would be dominated by Radio (note especially this this wonderful gem on Shakespeare last month), News, Politics, and CBeebies. And Pointless. It would have drama in, but I rarely have the energy to engage with much now, and I can't bring myself to watch War and Peace until I've reread the book again.

However, my favourites aren't really the point. That list could be entirely different and just as strong. The BBC is a place where magical things get made, lots of them, and many done in ways that commercial TV and Radio can't do and certainly can't sustain. This time last year, in the grip of a small baby and a lot of hours to fill, I listened to Serial. Frankly, I was dreading it being better than regular speech radio. It wasn't, though it was fine: a good story, told well. We do things that good every week on Radio 4, some better, and many times over. Serial, which lost money, has found it harder to replicate its success. Our music is unsurpassed, Radio 4 inimitable, and our News coverage wider, better and more diverse than anyone else. I wouldn't be without the Spectator and the Economist, but I rely on BBC News. And I know no-one else has as many correspondents in as many places because I've counted them.

I found that experience typical. Working for the BBC only increased my affection for most of the output, if at times straining my patience with the internal and external constraints. Working in News taught me not just to appreciate, but to love, the English Regions. My favourite BBC statistic remains that the regional current affairs strand Inside Out has higher audiences than Panorama. The BBC taught me how to think about digital with the whole audience in mind. BBC Radio, which is the best part of the BBC, gave me such pleasure. There, I got Radio 2 Eurovision approved and saw, brilliantly, Brad Paisley in session. It was marvellous.

This isn't a structured policy argument about the BBC. The technical arguments for and about funding are a reasonable argument to have, though not always had reasonably. There are things one could and should change about the BBC. However, I think this misses the point. The BBC's future has been dressed up in technocratic discussion for over a decade, yet for me it's never been about that. It's been about the institution. And any position anyone takes on the debate is about how they feel about the institution and I suspect institutions generally. David Hatch, quondam Controller of Radio Four, talked about running that station as like inheriting a long-established country estate that has to be handed on intact. I feel that about the whole BBC (and indeed the great estates). It should be handed on. I fear it won't be.

For now though, I feel honoured to have manned some of the barricades. It was an enormous privilege.