Bexpo

Clearly the major broadcasting event of the week is going to be the first episode of W1A, in which a team of BBC comedy producers, born and bred, assembled under Jon Plowman, get to expose the BBC b*llocks which has been the bane of their lives for years. No need for much invention, no need to make it up - just write it down, and away you go.

Oddly, the grandest period of BBC b*llocks came under plain-speaking Greg Dyke - the Common Man, after John Birt's Thomas Cromwell in A Man For All Seasons. The messianic side of Greg seriously thought he could change the culture he found on arrival at the BBC - an organisation, it was said, at each other's throats in a complex and costly internal market, laden with bureacracy, and with such low staff morale that it was hard to find a pulse.  At his side was Professor Gareth Jones, of the Henley Management College, who became for a period, Greg's HR supremo - and so the great lab experiment began. Trouble was, Greg and Gaz didn't have much time for hard pounding, preferring pints of Guinness in the King's Arms, Great Titchfield Street, where nobody knows your name. And so, a range of people took the simple idea of cheering the place up and making better programmes, and turned it into a gargantuan "project", festooned in b*llocky phrases, that in time, became as meaningless as anything concocted by Birt.

So first, we had "One BBC", and a new structure diagram, showing divisions as petals. Then, after many BBC executives had enjoyed trips to the West Coast of the USA, came "Making It Happen". This had seven "major themes";  Inspiring Creativity Everywhere (without mind-expanding drugs, necessarily); Connecting With Audiences; Valuing People; We Are The BBC (?); Great Spaces; Lead More, Manage Well; and Just Do It.  "Making It Happen" was then taken to all staff in a series of sessions called "Just Imagine" (how great the BBC could be if we all worked together to change it).  This was the bit that was supposed to be 'bottom up'; 24,000 staff coming up with change ideas.  Some of them contributed to a workstream called "Values", and if anyone was Head of Values, it was Roger Mosey, then in News, now at Selwyn College, selected to collate these thoughts and shape them into a totemic mantra for the most creative organisation in the world.

Here they are.

• Trust is the foundation of the BBC: we are independent, impartial and honest.
• Audiences are at the heart of everything we do. 
• We take pride in delivering quality and value for money. 
• Creativity is the lifeblood of our organization. 
• We respect each other and celebrate our diversity so that everyone can give of their best.
• We are one BBC: great things happen when we work together.

The values were eventually printed on the back of everyone's staff id cards. It wasn't the end; there followed The Big Conversation, The Big Brainstorm, a mahoosive leadership training initiative, Audience Insights, a drive to appraisals and performance management, and much much more. 

Then came Gilligan and Dr David Kelly, and Greg Dyke personally managing the BBC v Alastair Campbell. In the end, to nobody's surprise but his own, he lost to Blair, Hutton and the BBC Governors. 

I leave you to judge whether or not the Dyke lab experiment worked long-term, (without, for example, mentioning executive pay-offs, Respect At Work, DMI, attempts to close 6Music and BBC3 etc) and hope you enjoy W1A in a more informed way.

• 2pm Monday update: A regular correspondent notes that the BBC Values replaced instructions on what to do in case of fire on the back of identity cards. Thankfully there is so far no reported incident of people being unnecessarily burned as a result of the change.