Sir Roger Carr, chairman of BAE systems and new vice-chair of the BBC Trust. Photo: The CBI
“Sometimes you have to make hard sacrifices”, said Sir Michael Lyons, former chairman of the BBC Trust, after the Corporation’s decision not to renew Jeremy Clarkson’s contract on March 25. Clarkson’s apparent status as “too valuable to sack”, despite a long list of indiscretions, was displaced by the insistence that, in the words of the BBC’s director of television, “it’s like football clubs: no one is bigger than the club.”
The Clarkson fiasco – complete with “derogatory and abusive language”, a “physical attack” lasting around thirty seconds, and allegations of death threats made to the BBC Director-General by Clarkson fans – has, unsurprisingly, received its share of media coverage. Owen Jones saw the saga as a “test” of whether the “well-connected” and “highly paid” are held to the same standards as everyone else, while the BBC news website provided an almost comically wide spectrum of public reaction to Clarkson’s departure, ranging from the views of Star Trek actor William Shatner to the original “Stig”, Perry McCarthy.
