The BBC is guilty - and it’s frequently accused of this - of being too self-critical. Not the worst quality. Imagine if that light went out. Once the BBC goes, if it ever does, there will be nothing else like it ever again. There will just be Murdochs, and people like Murdoch. It will be horrible. How self-critical do we imagine Rupert Murdoch is? Or David Cameron, for that matter? Or Jeremy Hunt?
As self-critical as Mark Thompson [the BBC Director-General] and his BBC is, all they’re doing is trying to hold themselves to an unreasonably high standard. They try to make amends at every turn. That’s an incredible heart for a nation to have. You might think that’s foolish, you might think it’s unwise, but do you think it’s bad? Do you want rid of it?
We all criticise the BBC in the way that we all criticise someone we’ve lived with for a very long while. It’s not the first date anymore. It’s not even the first decade. It’s a long term relationship, and some of the romantic flush has gone… but we would all be weaker and smaller without it.
‘Doctor Who’ might just be the “most BBC show” that the BBC has ever made. It looks ridiculous, and yet it’s genius. The character of the Doctor seems like a madman, and yet he’s brilliant. The Doctor is what a madman looks like to an idiot, just as the BBC looks like a ramshackle, insane organisation, if you’re a twit. If you’re not, it looks like the most extraordinary place, the most extraordinary opportunity…
Nobody smirks when I say that the BBC might just be the soul of the nation, more so than any other institution, more so than parliament, more so than church. We place more faith in the BBC. It is magnificent. It holds everybody else to a higher standard just because it’s there - and I don’t think we’d know how to be British without it.