How Alan Yentob changed the BBC for the better (and worse)

Yahoo

25-05-2025

With the death of Alan Yentob, the BBC's erstwhile creative director and broadcasting titan, the corporation has lost the man who has done more than virtually anyone else in the post-war era to define it in the public imagination, for good and for ill alike.
For nearly six decades, Yentob was a seismic figure within and without the confines of Broadcasting House, a man whose vision reshaped its cultural output. He was that rare behind-the-scenes impresario who was also a household name, and his willingness to put himself on camera suggested that he saw himself as being as much a star as the figures he interviewed throughout his career, from Orson Welles to David Bowie.
Yentob's time with the BBC was a career of dizzying highs and lows, of glittering brilliance tainted by hubris. In addition to the art documentary series Arena and Imagine, he was directly responsible for many of the corporation's most iconic and memorable programmes during his tenure as BBC controller, firstly of BBC Two from 1987 to 1993 and then BBC One from 1993 and 1996. In retrospect, the high watermark of his career was as an executive, rather than as a presenter.
During this period, he commissioned programmes such as Pride and Prejudice (the series which made Colin Firth a heartthrob), Middlemarch, The Office and Absolutely Fabulous (the latter of which paid him appropriately backhanded homage by calling the character of a Moroccan houseboy 'Yentob'). He furthered the reach of Have I Got News For You, which began in 1990 but only really achieved critical mass under Yentob's enthusiastic patronage. That he would occasionally become one of its satirical targets was merely a price that he willingly paid to see it become the BBC's most popular and longest-running televised comedy panel show.
Yet the difficulty with Yentob was that he was vain and inclined to believe that he was a genius in his own right rather than a man who was at his best when allowing other, more talented individuals to thrive. The difficulties really began in 2004 when he was given the all-encompassing post of 'BBC creative director', which allowed him to do more or less as he wished. Anyone watching him closely might have expected that a fall was coming, and it duly did. The only surprise in retrospect is that it took over a decade to arrive.
He had joined the BBC in 1968 as a trainee, the only non-Oxbridge graduate in his cohort, and quickly ascended the corporation's ranks, a testament to his charisma and relentless drive. By the time he became controller of BBC Two in 1987, he had already established himself as the most influential figure in British television, and many of the shows that he commissioned there are justly regarded as classics. (Without him, for instance, it's fair to say there would be no Wallace and Gromit.) These years were nothing short of a cultural renaissance for the channel; at a time when many might have asked what BBC Two stood for, he transformed it into a crucible of televisual innovation, which more than held its own against its rival Channel 4.
Some, not least Yentob himself, might have whispered that he was the most significant figure at the corporation since the days of Sir John Reith. When his flagship arts show Arena was at its peak, such self-congratulation did not seem wholly absurd. The show managed to look at both high and low culture with the same blend of seriousness and commitment, suggesting that punk rock and Orson Welles alike were worthy of intellectual assessment.
This not only influenced broadsheet newspapers' cultural supplements but also led to Yentob himself fronting Imagine, a show that was dogged by controversy in 2007 when it was revealed that other journalists had conducted some of the interviews, with shots of Yentob frowning and looking quizzical dropped in. This was known as 'Noddygate', on account of the number of shots of the presenter nodding and looking sage. While a staff investigation reportedly found that none of that footage had been broadcast, this made Yentob a marked man in the estimation of junior colleagues, who were all too aware that other, less venerable figures had lost their jobs for rather less.
All the same, Yentob was a serious contender for the role of director-general. He later said, with a typical combination of apparent self-deprecation and considerable self-regard that, 'I'm really glad I didn't get it. I'd probably have been sacked. I think I could have run the BBC, but obviously I would have run it in my way.'
Despite his self-consciously cerebral mien, there was also something of the overgrown child about Yentob, a sense that he was giddily enjoying his power and influence. It was little surprise, with this in mind, that he launched CBBC and CBeebies, cementing the BBC's role as a nurturer of young minds. It was ironic, then, that his legacy was irrevocably marred by his involvement with Kids Company, the charity that he served as chairman for and which collapsed ignominiously in 2015 due to accusations of financial mismanagement. Yentob was accused of trying to influence the BBC's coverage of the scandal. His meddling was described by MPs as 'unwise at best, deliberately intimidating at worst,' and he resigned from his much-prized creative director role in December 2015. (An internal BBC inquiry concluded that he did not affect its reporting.)
Yentob's penchant for self-promotion and name-dropping—Clive James once quipped he had heard the executive was 'in the Red Sea, in conversation with the Dalai Lama'— allowed him to become a whipping boy for all those who disliked the modern BBC. He was seen as overpaid (in 2013, it was revealed his annual salary was more than £330,000), out of touch and, in the inimitable words of the Daily Mail, a 'profligate luvvie'.
Yet it is hard to view his ultimate legacy as purely a tainted one. Yentob made some of the most memorable and successful television of the last few decades. It is this, rather than his many failings and excessive self-confidence, that should ultimately stand as his lasting memorial.
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