For someone who has spent most of her career in the rubbish of the BBC and Channel 4, this has been a rare slip. The secretary of culture is a good hater. He does not forgive and does not forget. Once the war is over he will return to typing. It will be as if Lyse Doucet and Matt Frei never existed. As part of her campaign to overthrow the BBC on her own, Doris had initially sought to nominate former Daily Mail editor Lord Dacre a war for anything even vaguely liberal – as the new chair of the media regulator , Ofcom. This turned out to be an excessive request for the selection committee, which refused to validate his appointment and Dacre burst into tears, even when Dorries tried to get him to apply for the job a second time. For a man who prides himself on being tough and not computer-savvy, he has surprisingly thin skin. He can catch it, but he can’t get it. Dacre’s replacement was never likely to share his complete, pathological lack of sensitivity, but Dorries must have believed that Michael Grade had found a more than adequate second better. A Tory peer who seemed to share her anti-wake agenda. Someone who had complained about the BBC license fee and had spoken out against liberal values. Best of all, he described the BBC coverage of the partygate as aggressive and disrespectful. It was perfectly normal for the prime minister to go to as many parties as he wanted. He made the laws and had the right to break them. And if Boris Johnson chose to lie about them, then that was his privilege. Lord Grad suffers a hell of a shock when someone tells him that it was ITV and the Daily Mirror that broke most party stories. Doris, however, could soon shed a few more tears, because, based on his performance at the pre-appointment meeting of the culture selection committee, Gray may not have been the warrior of culture he had hoped for. Rather it appeared as, at worst, slightly irrelevant in some respects, slightly restrained. If the committee wanted any other opinions, he did too. It could be what everyone wanted. He was not so bothered. His role at Ofcom was to be independent and he could do it. And, in any case, look at the positive side: it was not Paul Dacre. This thought seemed to be the most important in the committee’s mind. Grad’s appearance was nothing – the meeting was completely decorative as the committee had no authority to block his appointment – so the proceedings were well-intentioned throughout. No one cared enough to ask some really tough questions and Grade intended to be as polite and non-controversial as possible. Whether you like it or not, you have to admit that he is an old professional. Within minutes, he had most of the committee eat from the palm of his hand. So why did Grade choose to apply for the job, committee chairman Julian Knight asked. The grade stopped. He was at a dead end and was reading the empty statements. No one had suggested naming him. Away from that. He had just realized how much he was interested in the government’s online damage bill. And what social media did he use? Oh, he said. This was what made him so special in the field. Because he did not actually use any. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok: forget it. But his son spent a lot of time on his phone, so he probably made him a specialist. Labor Clive Efford commented on Grade’s comments about the license fee. Grad looked surprised. He had never said that the BBC should not be funded by taxpayers. He just thought it was unconscious that the company was asking for more money when he said people had to choose between heating and food. No one asked him the key question if he believed the BBC would still be of good value if the license fee was raised. The only sign of cheerfulness came when SNP John Nicolson asked him about his anti-wake agenda. Calling his future Ofcom colleagues “awakened Neptune warriors” was just an office buzzword, Grade said. And previously he had only defended the right of a Freeview nostalgia channel to show an old program from the 70’s in which someone had tanned. It was clearly a file show. Hell, he was the man who uncovered the Black and White Minstrel and the beauty pageant when he was in charge of BBC1 in the 1980s. Yes, he did support Lawrence Fox in Question Time. Lozza’s grandfather was a friend of his dad. And he only said that it was good to hear different voices to be supportive. One had to defend not very intelligent, moderately successful actors. After all, all this would have stopped when he was president of Ofcom. Each complaint would be dealt with strictly on the basis of its own merits. As for the difference, how much more diverse could his date be? Who else was distributing 2 142,000’s jobs for three days a week to 79-year-old Tory peers? It was hard work, but someone had to do it. After that, everything went very smoothly as the committee members asked vague questions about other aspects of Ofcom’s responsibilities without much interest in the answers. They were jobs for the boys, but the boy was close enough to one of them. The grade just kept things vague and polite. He would do his best and keep his head around the job when he started. There was only time for a sting in history when Labor’s Kevin Brennan asked him about his failed West End Man of La Mancha. This clearly hurt Grade. He must have lost more than he likes to remember. For his next musical, he would definitely get a star that he could really sing. This was the only mistake in his CV review, which he was about to admit.
