No love lost

Those who would rip the naughty BBC from the warm, if irritated, bosom of The BBC Trust, should be aware that the cold arms of state-child minder Ofcom would show their new charge no favours.

Dame Colette Bowe, outgoing chairman of Ofcom, as reported by The Guardian, told a dinner this week "I am an economist ..... There is a lot to be said for contestable funding on competition groundsI have got sympathy with the idea that some more of the funding currently available for public service broadcasting should be contestable. Because on the whole I am on the side of the people in the sector who believe that what we need is even more competition and dynamism and innovation than we have got."

As well as being an economist, Dame Colette was a life model at Slade School of Art (to help pay for her own university career at Queen Mary College and the LSE); a civil servant sidekick to Michael Heseltine, Norman Tebbit and Leon Brittan, which all went belly up when she explored the careeer of press officer - and her bosses were rowing over Westland; and thence a collector of non-executive and quango posts, plus good works. She's a fan of Liverpool FC and joked (apparently) on ascending to the top job at Southwark Bridge that she would have the BBC rename their flagship children's programme "Red Peter".