Carrie out

Carrie Gracie left the BBC yesterday, placing, rather than dropping, the mike on the shiny BBC News channel presentation desk. At 58, there's more she can turn her hand to - I would suggest she could earn big bucks in both crisis and reputation management, at which she has outsmarted BBC management for three years. 

Then, of course, she will also have a decent final salary pension in prospect, of more than half her current pay; she joined in 1987 as a trainee producer in the World Service. She may also have picked up a small redundancy package, leaving the well-stacked roster of news presenters which the BBC is keen to reduce, post-Covid.