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The challenge is the culture. You have to have a vision for the BBC-it can't merely be that it's big and has a place in the market.

I'm not certain that the BBC can claim to be making a wide enough range of distinctive programmes to make the case convincingly.

The BBC fulfils a wonderful cultural function. Maybe the problem is that it feels it needs to be everything to everybody.

BBC TV gets hold of an idea and beats it to death until we're all heartily sick of it. They buy people without thinking what they're going to do with them. It's the wrong way around. What they should be doing is employing really good ideas people to come up with good ideas.

What comes with a job as a staff member of the BBC is a certain self-censoring that you get utterly used to. You don't say everything you think. You hold back on some things.

The BBC can be infuriating at times but I love it with a passion.

All I can do is advocate changes at the BBC while respecting editorial independence upon which the success of the BBC rests. I can't do anything that requires the BBC to pay certain people certain amounts.

The BBC is the greatest broadcaster in the world. It's the standard that everyone measures themselves against. If we lose the BBC, it won't be quite as bad as losing the royal family, but an integral part of this country will have gone. But then, I'm an old guy.

It was regarded as a responsibility of the BBC to provide programs which have a broad spectrum of interest, and if there was a hole in that spectrum, then the BBC would fill it.

The BBC produces wonderful programmes; it also produces a load of old rubbish.