There will never be another Alan Yentob

In the excellent BBC comedy series W1A, which poked a harsher degree of fun at its makers than many would have believed credible, there is one especially amusing throwaway gag. The hapless Ian Fletcher (Hugh Bonneville) is taken on a tour of Broadcasting House, and briefly veers into a meeting room, where, to his surprise, he sees Salman Rushdie and Alan Yentob engaged in a game of arm wrestling. Both men look up at him in pained surprise, and a baffled Fletcher makes his excuses and leaves.  

I was reminded of this moment yesterday when the news broke of Yentob’s death, at the age of 78. My initial response was to think predominantly of the broadcaster’s significant, even overwhelming self-regard and preening. There have been few figures in public life more associated with both name-dropping ( ‘Salman’ was probably the least of it) and putting themselves front and centre when it came to the programmes that he was responsible for.  

This reached a nadir in 2007 with the so-called ‘Noddygate’ scandal, in which shots of Yentob nodding gravely and looking serious were cut and pasted into Imagine interviews that he did not conduct.