Jonathan Maitland

I never wanted to be one of those grumpy ex-BBC types who write articles with headlines like 'what has happened to Today?'. My resolve, however, was broken yesterday by the following text from a distinguished former BBC editor: The Today programme now playing the Amol Rajan leaving tape on air! If you didn't hear it, listen on catch up – utter madness. I worked for the BBC for 15 years and was a reporter on Today for six of those. They were the best years of my professional broadcasting life, and I want the programme and the corporation to survive and thrive. But I defy even the BBC’s staunchest defenders to listen to what I have now heard and not, at the very least, be baffled by what is, indeed, going on at Today.

It's 3.19 am and my brain cells are ricocheting. Nothing to do with the usual sleep-wreckers of money, sex or work but this: how to fit Antoine Semenyo, Bruno Fernandes and Morgan Rogers into my Fantasy Premier League (FPL) team before the season starts on 22 August, without exceeding my budget? It would be nice to live in a world where FPL doesn’t stop my son calling his team “Saka my Balls FC” 4.24 am: I pore over dozens of players’ stats and watch several FPL influencer videos on YouTube, then try various permutations. 5.26 am: I crack it. I pack my defence with cheap workhorses from lesser teams like Hull, Ipswich and Coventry and can now fit in all Three Midfield Musketeers. If you don’t know what I’m on about you are probably in the minority.

I’m unlikely to be invited to dinner at BBC director general Matt Brittin’s any time soon but judging by the cuts he has announced, it would be salami slices all round for starters. The £500 million savings plan for the corporation, unveiled earlier this month, includes the axing of Radio 4’s The World Tonight and, inexplicably, the station’s Midnight News. Budget-wise, this is like dropping a pint of semi-skimmed from the monthly food shop for a family of six. One prominent BBC lifer is so baffled and distressed by the binning of the flagship bulletin that they have written to King Charles in protest. Credit to Matt for trying, though: things couldn’t carry on the way they were. The axe (or rather, kitchen knife), however, has fallen in the wrong place.

So farewell then Tim Davie with your spotless white trainers, on-message management speak and complete lack of journalistic nous. And hello Matt Brittin, the new Director General of the BBC, a job which may just be The Most Impossible In The World. To survive, the BBC is going to have to adapt, big time Unlike those other two all-time difficult gigs, Prime Minister and England football manager, there are no potential big wins like wars and World Cups, only potential catastrophes. The Hutton Inquiry of 2004 (more of which later) was, for some, the most damaging episode in BBC history. But then came the Jimmy Savile revelations. And the Martin Bashir interview with Princess Diana. And the Huw Edwards scandal. And the Hamas-sponsored documentary.

It is said there is only one rule when it comes to dramatising the Holocaust: don’t. The argument is essentially this: the unique horror of the event is beyond the scope of conventional artistic representation. Illuminate what happened with a documentary, sure, but apply a glossy Hollywood sheen to those monstrous events and you risk artistic catastrophe. I’ve seen many productions which fall into that category but here’s two recent ones: Hunters, an Al Pacino series for Amazon which portrays a gang of 1970s New York Nazi hunters as superhero vigilantes, and Sky Atlantic’s tastefully shot The Tattooist of Auschwitz, a sentimental, semi-fictionalised (why? Is the truth not enough?) account of a concentration camp love story.

Albert Einstein wasn’t thinking about the BBC when he defined insanity as 'doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result', but he could have been. The BBC’s latest scandal, involving its former star presenter Huw Edwards, has followed a remarkably similar trajectory to the last two marmalade droppers that embroiled the Corporation. So will the BBC finally learn its lesson? The way the BBC dealt with Huw Edwards – once the embodiment of BBC culture and values but now a disgraced sex offender who admitted making indecent images of children – has strong echoes of the Jimmy Savile and Martin Bashir scandals.