Patten’s Beeb schedule shows his hands-on habits

 
p16 diary BBC Trust Chairman Chris Patten
Getty
21 January 2013

BBC Trust chairman Chris Patten refused to show Tory MP Philip Davies his BBC itinerary two months ago, telling a select committee hearing that Davies was “thoroughly impertinent”. He asked Davies: “Do you want to know my toilet habits?”

Well, Patten may not like it, but the BBC has released excerpts of exactly what Davies asked for under the Freedom of Information Act, showing Patten speaks to programme makers and politicians. In January last year, Patten met Radio 1 DJ Chris Moyles and ex-Labour Culture Secretary James Purnell, lunched journalist John Kampfner and called Lord Deben. In July he rang Radio 4 presenter Steve Hewlett ahead of a photo-call with then director-general George Entwistle, before taking a planned phone call from Lord Birt.

In August he met BBC1 controller Danny Cohen, had 45 minutes with Alan Yentob and an hour with the Radio Independents Group. He met Peter Bennett-Jones, chairman of Tiger Aspect productions and Comic Relief and phoned Stephen Lovegrove, Permanent Secretary at the Department of Energy and Climate Change. This may show Patten is not as hands-off as he says but it’s certainly preferable to knowing his toilet habits.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in