Sentencing time

Extraordinary. Both the DCMS and BBC will have schooled Dr Samir Shah before his pre-appointment hearing this morning - a lugubrious Andrew Scadding, one time Conservative Head of Broadcasting, now the BBC's Head of Public Affairs, sat behind the candidate. Yet eight minutes in to Dr Shah's viva for the job of chairman, he pre-judged recent tweets from Gary Lineker as apparently in breach of the most recent set of social media guidelines.  

Driving further into the flooded road, he said he didn't think it was helpful for Lineker to sign a campaigning letter about the Government's Rwanda strategy in the first place; he thought Lineker's subsequent tweets, rising to Twitter baiting by Grant Shapps and Jonathan Gullis, were 'ad hominem'; and that the BBC needed to 'find a solution to this problem'. 

Dr Shah doesn't seem to have the sense to see that this creates a clear expectation that, as he arrives through the revolving doors at Broadcasting House, Mr Lineker will be leaving shortly afterwards. Board meetings at the V&A, however thorough, don't seem to have prepared the Doctor for this, and other mantraps. He committed to investigations about cuts to local radio, the outside London strategy, the behaviour of Sir Robbie Gibb, to thinking about whether you can be a BBC Board member and in a political party, and to reviewing plans for General Election coverage. 

If the skill set he brings to the organisation is media experience, he seemed to flounder on the Media Bill, and harked more than once back to the days of Granada and London Weekend. Perhaps his vision statement was clearer than his conversations with the MPs, but Dr Shah's one hour and 55 minutes in front of the committee will not have bolstered staff morale much.