Don't mention the arts

Sir Roy Strong takes a swipe at Alan Yentob in his diaries published in The Daily Mail. 

July 15, 2015

I was interviewed by Lucy Worsley [for the BBC]. I was surprised to be asked. 

I had always concluded that it was probably Alan Yentob who had kept me off BBC TV for 30 years, except in the early Nineties when he had a sabbatical and [my series] Royal Gardens slipped through.

This man had a death grip over the Arts on BBC TV for some 30 years. Certain people like [historian] Simon Schama were pushed and pushed by him and few things hurt me more this year than Schama doing a series on British portraiture at the National Portrait Gallery.

There he was, a man who barely knew the back of a picture from the front, handling items so very dear to my heart. I couldn't bear to watch it until Brian Allen, a Trustee of the Gallery, said how awful the series had been. I respect Brian. I therefore saw ten minutes of one and, yes, it was truly awful.

The producer [of Lucy Worsley's interview] was a man called Basil Comely, who loathed Yentob and told me what a creep he was, now chasing after Tony Hall, the new Director-General.

Basil is out of the BBC but has an impressive record of production for the Corporation. He must have suffered for some time.