Icing

Someone needs to do a little shuttle diplomacy over the weekend, to stop a feud of Dickensian proportions building up at the BBC.

Mark Thompson, former DG, was too busy to come to defend severance deals approved on his watch, in front of the Public Accounts Committee - he might well be attending the "Media Moguls' Summit" in Sun Valley, Idaho - but he clearly found time to catch up with the evidence of Lord Patten and Antony Fry. First came a statement from the New York Times expressing continuing confidence in their CEO; then came quotes from emails from the DG's office back in October 2010, specifically about the deals for Mark Byford and Sharon Baylay (spooky how quickly they were found, when BBC FOI responses talk about the impossibility of such a task being completed in four working days).

Thompson said "I had made sure that the trust were aware of and understood all potentially contentious issues". A spokeswoman for the Trust said the email "did not contain a breakdown of the payments themselves, and no reasonable reading of this correspondence would have concluded that it indicates these individuals were to be given excessive pay in lieu of notice."  The emails are an example of an elaborate sub-governance process at the Corporation - fixers (in this case, Jessica Cecil, for Thommo, and Nicholas Kroll, for The Trust) "squaring off" financial matters before any formal process of approval is reached. We haven't yet heard from Sir Michael Lyons on Byford and Baylay; it can't be long - but iciness between two of Britain's leading lay Roman Catholics, Patten and Thompson, needs urgent thawing.

Will we also hear from Marcus Agius, former senior non-exec at the BBC, chair of the Executive remuneration committee, rubbished as "out-to-lunch" on acceptable pay levels by Antony Fry, Trustee with responsibility for financial control ? Until July 2, Marcus was Chairman of the British Bankers' Association; Antony is chairman of the UK Investment wing of Portuguese bank Espirito Santo. Is this really the way bankers talk about each other ?