Treasurer

There's some refreshingly frank, if rather dangerous, about Zarin Patel's farewell to the BBC in house organ Ariel. The Chief Finance Officer is leaving after 15 years with the Corporation - no job fixed, holidays first.

She has a turn of phrase that often seemed to desert her in front of the Public Accounts Committee. First - on leaving, she says it had been on her agenda since 2009 and the incoming DG, George Entwistle agreed it at the Olympic Opening Ceremony - "an extraordinary day of emotion".  Zarin was a guest of Lloyds, George a guest of the IOC. Will the details of that agreement figure in the NAO report on "Severance and wider benefits for senior BBC managers", expected next week ? Tony Hall's £150k cap doesn't come into play until September.

Then, on closing down an excellent final salary pension scheme: "Someone has to do the hard stuff, but in the end we lost the trust of our staff."

She also regrets not stopping the Digital Media Initiative a year earlier, and then, most unfortunately, refers to former COO Caroline Thomson as "partner in crime". This may be gallows humour unappreciated in the forthcoming Price Waterhouse Cooper report on what went wrong in controlling the project.