- [in 2004] It just seems to me that the television service has largely been run by women for the last four to five years and they don't seem to have done a great job of work. There was no innovation; constant makeovers and far too many cookery and gardening programmes. Dumb, dumb, dumb. I think the BBC has to pull its socks up quite considerably. I have nothing against women - I've worked with them all my life.
- The BBC has only one purpose in life and that is to make marvellous programmes.
- For about 25 years we did the best comedy, the best drama and the rest of it. I have been very critical of the recent dramatic output of BBC Television and comedy seems to be very thin. There are endless programmes about housing, gardens and cooking.
- [on Rome (2005)] I turned it off after 15 minutes because it's rubbish, historically inaccurate and done simply to titillate American taste.
- [on ShakespeaRe-Told (2005)] I think it's preposterous and perverse and foolish to reject the greatest dramatist that has ever lived and have him rewritten. Some clown was quoted as saying the other day he was making Shakespeare more accessible. He's been accessible, for Christ's sake, for 400 years and they don't need to do that.
- Our country takes the BBC's dedication to truth-telling wholly for granted. You only have to look at the highly organised lying in the service of an ideology or a creed or a state which afflicts entire continents, to see how rare truth-telling is in broadcasting or, for that matter, what extraordinary efforts are being made by totalitarian regimes to prevent undoctored broadcasts from reaching their own citizens.
- The licence fee itself has some flaws of which we have been aware for many years, but whose virtues greatly outstrip its flaws. The licence fee is a form of hypothecated tax and, yes, it is regressive and burdens old age pensioners (who amount to one-third of all licence fee holders and who are the heaviest users of the available service), it is compulsory and, paid as a single annual payment, amounts to a good deal of money. On the other hand, it does amount to the best bargain in Britain, a slogan which is truer than any single advertising claim I can think of: it is by far the cheapest form of paying for a high standard of broadcasting.
- I'm told constantly that I ran an organisation that was bloated and bureaucratic. I'm told that it now takes nine months to get a programme decision. In my time, John Sullivan who wrote Only Fools and Horses (1981) - he was a scene shifter - sent to the head of comedy a thing called Citizen Smith (1977), and eight weeks later it was on the air. Cedric Messina, who was in charge of Play of the Month, came to me when I was managing director of television and said to me, "Let's put on all the plays of Shakespeare (William Shakespeare)." I thought, Good God Almighty, I never thought of that. I said okay, and 24 hours later I'd sorted out the budget and we did all the plays of Shakespeare in six years. We weren't bureaucratic, we were quite swift, actually. BBC television hasn't made a Shakespeare play for nearly 20 years and its programmes now are substandard.
- It has always seemed to me that it was the broadcaster's duty at times to shock, but that he must take care not to outrage his audience; otherwise the dialogue between them would become wholly one-sided.
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