By ROLAND WHITE
Published: | Updated:
John Simpson: 60 Years At The BBC (BBC2)
Rating:
Three stars
John Simpson has been at the BBC so long that, when he joined, the licence fee was £5 a year. The modern equivalent of that is just under £85.
Ah, those were the days. Now, it's £180, which might explain why 539,000 people stopped paying last year.
John Simpson: 60 Years At The BBC was a celebration of his long and action-packed career.
He's been shot at, tortured by Palestinians, bombed by the American air force, sacked as a newsreader, battered by supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini, and — perhaps worse — he had to look on politely as Libyan dictator Colonel Gaddafi constantly broke wind during an interview.
As a young political editor, he tried to shout a question at Harold Wilson about rumours of a forthcoming election.
He got as far as 'Excuse me, Prime Minister' before Wilson punched him hard in the stomach.
John Simpson: 60 Years At The BBC was a celebration of his long and action-packed career
'I'm going to call the Director- General and have you sacked,' he said.
Can you imagine what would happen if Andy Burnham adopted the same media strategy?
Yet back then the Downing Street press pack didn't even think it was a story. 'You can't ask the PM questions,' they said snootily.
In those days, you see, the BBC was a place where gentlemen worked. 'It was like walking into the 1930s,' Simpson recalled.
This was illustrated by black-and-white footage of two men from the BBC newsroom with accents that would have made Edward VIII sound common.
Covering the Islamic revolution in Tehran, Simpson and his cameraman were surrounded by a revolutionary mob.
'They started the process of ripping us to pieces,' he recalled. In desperation, he hoisted a picture of the Ayatollah and chanted in Arabic: 'Long live Khomeini.'
'You shouldn't have done that,' said his cameraman after they escaped, proving that even in the late 1970s the BBC took a very strict view on impartiality.
His view of the BBC is rather rose-tinted. He might still think the news is strictly impartial, but a poll last year revealed that nearly a third of viewers think it has a left-wing bias
Simpson can appear rather pleased with himself. A newspaper once said that 'his obnoxious arrogance disgraces the BBC'.
But here he was rather self-effacing, and acknowledged his faults. Quite a few of them, too.
He is perhaps best remembered for claiming in 2001 that the BBC had liberated Kabul from the Taliban. 'I was such an idiot,' he says now. 'I was buoyed up with enthusiasm.'
He blames himself for the death of a translator in a friendly-fire attack in Iraq, and regrets the way that his career affected his personal life: 'I've hurt a lot of people by how I've lived my life.'
His view of the BBC is rather rose-tinted. He might still think the news is strictly impartial, but a poll last year revealed that nearly a third of viewers think it has a left-wing bias.
'I don't like an awful lot about the BBC,' he says, 'but by God I love it.'
To misquote the late Queen, opinions may vary.
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Patrick Humbert, 83, eats only meat, fish and eggs and believes that broccoli was invented in the 1970s. 'Vegetables are toxic,' he says. 'Vegetarians have smaller brains.'