BBC Director-General Warns Cuts May Prevent Future Legal Battles To Protect Identity Of Car Driver

Protecting this man's identity: priceless

The director-general of the BBC, Mark Thompson, has warned that the upcoming talks on the future of the TV licence fee may jeopardise the aura of mystique surrounding the identity of a man who drives cars around in circles for Jeremy Clarkson’s pleasure.

“Right now the BBC is running up eye-watering legal fees in fighting Rupert Murdoch’s HarperCollins in the high court to prevent them from publishing the real name of a man in a crash helmet,” he told dozing reporters in his MacTaggart lecture in Edinburgh. “We can only perform this essential public service because Rupert Murdoch’s BSkyB was singularly unsuccessful in persuading the previous government that the BBC should be shut down immediately for the heinous crime of charging people £145.50 a year for nine TV channels of mostly British content, eight national and 46 regional radio stations plus the World Service, five bloody orchestras and a comprehensive website, and chucking the news in at no extra cost.”

“Sorry if we don’t offer any channels of wall-to-wall football from Kazakhstan, or insultingly patronising documentary channels aimed squarely at people who would rather gnaw their own arms off than read a book,” he added. “But if viewers really want to lop a few bob off the licence fee, I’m sure we can sack David Attenborough and replace him with Vernon Kay.”