Taki Taki

What I would do if I were in charge of the BBC

Fox Photos/Stringer/Getty

Gstaad

I’ve been wrestling all week with indecision, the kind that tests one’s soul, and the uncertainty is killing me. It’s like having to choose between Keira and Jennifer, when it’s normal to want both. No, I’m not being greedy — and it’s not even my fault that I’m in this position, but that of my esteemed colleague Douglas Murray, author of The Madness of Crowds and a fellow columnist. Two weeks ago, at his most serious, he proposed that I be put in charge of either the BBC or the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Yippee, hooray!

Douglas was annoyed when certain Tory wets did not defend the appointment of a past Australian prime minister as a UK trade adviser. Instead of telling the left-wing hack who was grilling them about the appointment to drop dead, they folded like an overused accordion. Hence Douglas’s call for Taki. But why did he inject the word ‘or’? I want both — to head the BBC and the EHRC. (Plus Keira and Jennifer to boot.)

The first thing I’d do is fire 90 per cent of all BBC personnel who edit, research or present news, starting with Emily Maitlis, unless she accepts a posting to Grozny or Burkina Faso for the duration. There will be no woke fanatics allowed within a block of the studios and the likes of Frankie Boyle will never again tarnish a BBC screen. Fairness will be paramount, and I will not choose people who do not menstruate over those who do.

But I will ban the Corporation from showing filth, and that includes every single film made over here and in America in the past 40 years.

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