Smack

Forget Eastenders. BBC people of my age are in a Jean Seaton frenzy. Who was the spanker ?

Jean's new book Pinkoes and Traitors: The BBC and the nation, 1974 - 1987 tells us some stuff that has been in conversation rather than print for some time. Cover boy Sir Robin Day was a bit of a masher, as were Huw Wheldon, Malcolm Muggeridge and Sir George Howard.

But the book also tells of a group of women getting together to complain to the Head of Personnel about an unnamed man in a position of authority who propositioned women for spanking. According to Seaton, BBC executive Brian Wenham initially dismissed the allegations as harmless. When the women threatened to go to the Governors, “a compromise was found and the man was posted to a BBC job – abroad – with an expensive apartment in New York”.