Over the weekend The Observer carried extracts from tonight's Arena programme in which John Birt says how close he came to being forced out by Duke Hussey over the Panorama interview with Princess Diana. John is quoted as saying of Hussey:
Having failed at that he tried to get the governors to condemn the way in which I had handled the programme and particularly the fact that I hadn't alerted him as chairman. He was on more fertile territory with that, because in a perfect world I should have informed him. But he struggled even there. And he failed to get what he wanted: a stinging rebuke which, he calculated, would force my resignation.
Some of this is in John's autobiography, and a bit is in Duke Hussey's autobiography as well. I was the BBC's Head of Public Affairs at the time - and though I knew things were tense it was only sometime after I left the BBC that I was told the story as John Birt tells it tonight - and not by him, but by someone else who was in the know.
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