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A very grim two hours for George Entwistle in front of the Commons Culture Committee. He got no quarter from any of the MPs, and his quiet, hesistant style made him seem hunted and haunted. He was woefully under-prepared on current allegations of sexual harassment - and from then on, the Committee sensed blood, unfairly but understandably characterising him as an Editor in Chief with no interest in journalism, who's failed to get a grip.  George needed some powerful phrase-making about the independence and seriousness of the inquiries he's set up, and it just wasn't there.

He'll need more than a stiff drink when he gets home. He needs to step up his game fast. He needs better coaches and a better PR team.

Would any of his rivals for the DG-ship have done better?  Hard to say. The tangle within news seems to be of news' own making. The BBC fashion to run for "an inquiry" in the face of a crisis has been there since Hutton and Byford.  But that shouldn't stop a CEO getting the story right in his or her own mind from the start, to shape their public arguments, rather than waiting for an inquiry to report on where things went wrong.

It's clearly much more grim for Peter Rippon. It's hard to believe that there won't be others who'll find the outcome of the Pollard Inquiry life-changing.