Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The BBC provides the commentary on our lives, the soundtrack of the nation. It is one of the most powerful unifying forces in the United Kingdom today.
SM:TV' is where we learned our trade. It was young, we could try out new sketches every week. When we got better ratings than our BBC rival, 'Live And Kicking,' it was amazing.
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.
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.
I worked on 'Blue Peter' and 'Tonight' and lots of TV plays, filmed people like Rudolf Nureyev and Ted Heath, and ended up a senior cameraman with my own crew. I'd had my first short story published in 1947, and when my writing really started to take off I decided to go freelance, and eventually left the BBC in 1965.
A lot of people want to know why did I leave the BBC: did I have an argument with them? No! I had 13 wonderful years. But it was time. Since I left university, I'd only ever worked for the BBC. It was simply time.
The other day, I was taking part in an audience Q&A when I was roundly scolded by a woman for 'allowing the BBC to ruin the English language.' Naturally I felt terrible, as I had no idea either that it was happening or that I was responsible.
When the news is good, the BBC view is: 'Get the government out of the picture quickly, don't allow them to say anything about it.' When the news is bad: 'Let's all dump on the government.'
My first job was at the BBC but was really dull. I was working in the BBC's reference department, where I did a lot of filing. I had always been interested in films and theatre, so I thought that getting a job at the BBC would be a good idea, but the job was really mundane.
I am sorry to be leaving the BBC. I have enjoyed a fascinating seven years at the corporation and am particularly proud to have played a small part in the development of the BBC's Global News services, BBC World Service and BBC World.
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.
Following 25 children for the TV series 'Child of Our Time' has been extraordinary. The BBC's original plan was to commemorate the new millennium. What better way than to film a number of expectant mums from across the U.K.? Coming from widely different backgrounds, all were due to give birth on January 1, 2000.
As an arts journalist in London, working mainly for the BBC, I interviewed hundreds if not thousands of authors. From them I gleaned a great deal of passing instruction in writing and I observed one fascinating detail: no two writers approach their work - physically - in the same way.
The BBC is a very confident broadcasting organisation and it needs brands like 'Top of the Pops' and 'Top Gear.'
Not being part of the BBC with 'Top Gear' any more does pain me, because it's an organisation I approve of.
The BBC has the obligation to think big. And at the moment, that clarion call sounds an uncertain note to me.
I think the BBC has come a long way in equal pay. I think it's come the furthest of all in the representation of women on screen.
An adaptation I was working on of Trollope's 'The Pallisers' has been axed by the BBC... I was also going to do Dickens' 'Dombey and Son' but they've asked me to do 'David Copperfield' instead.
I remember early in my career people telling me I needed to change my accent, that I needed to sound more professional, more BBC perhaps, but I think if I wasn't from Middlesbrough I wouldn't have done as well as I have.
I haven't heard any music on the BBC World Service in a long time. Maybe I'm listening at the wrong times. But not one single piece of music.
There's a Norwegian equivalent to 'BBC Introducing' called 'P3 Untouched,' and I remember when they played the first song I ever wrote that I'd put online. I was 16 at that point. That was the first moment where I was like, 'Oh, maybe this is something I want to do more of.'
When we used to watch some BBC kids' shows it felt like some of the presenters were parental figures, we wanted to be their cheeky uncles really, their fun uncles, and speak to them on their level.
It's amazing that Sky is the only place that has two dedicated arts channels. The BBC is doing very well... but why don't they do more?
Of course 'Horizon' had made an impact on me from a young age, but it was also humbling to meet and interview eminent scientists, and hear their high opinion of the series and of the science presented on the BBC more generally.
I made it clear when the Barclays took over the 'Telegraph' that I wanted no editorial position there. There is no way I could take a high-level editorial position at the papers. I have my work for the BBC, and that would be compromised if I did.
It has been an honour to present BBC 'Sports Personality Of The Year' for the last 19 years and I have loved every minute of it. The BBC have asked me to stay but I had made the decision to downsize my commitments a while ago, and I knew that the time would be right after what was always set to be a magical 2012.
The first series of 'Open All Hours' came and went without much fanfare because the BBC, in its almighty wisdom, put it out on BBC2, reasoning that it was 'a gentle comedy', better suited to the calms of the second channel than to the noisier, choppier waters of the first.
From Public Radio International, there's 'PRI's The World', which is the States looking out at the rest of the globe. Elsewhere, the 'Global News Podcast' from the BBC World Service offers something similar.
It was an interesting question as to whether the BBC had a future in the digital world, and what form of market failure could justify the licence fee system.
Bake Off' will be a hit in Channel 4 terms but I don't think it will ever reach the heights it has on the BBC just because it won't. I love the show I am a big fan of the show, I think it is great.
Although being economics editor sounds impressive, it does not mean I actually edit anything. It mainly reflects two decades of title-inflation at the BBC, which has given ever more status to senior reporters, presumably because it is cheaper to do that than to offer higher pay.
In 1941, the BBC was setting up local, low-powered transmitters that were switched off if there was an air raid so they couldn't be used by German planes to navigate. As a 'youth in training,' my job was to switch the transmitter on in the mornings and off at night, and to check that it, and the feeder land lines, were working.
Too often, there are complaints in the British papers about the BBC. It's too left wing, too right wing, too pro-Brexit, too anti, and so on. It's only when you go abroad and try to find out what is going on in the world that everyone falls with gratitude before the BBC News.
The BBC's television, radio and online services remain an important part of British culture and the fact the BBC continues to thrive amongst audiences at home and abroad is testament to a professional and dedicated management team who are committed to providing a quality public service.
I've always had an unsentimental view. I don't think the BBC is my auntie. I worked there for years, and you learn that they don't love you for yourself. They'll use you as long as you're popular. You shouldn't wait until it starts to wane. It can sometimes end badly.
When I worked for the BBC, what I was paid to do 'House Party' was all over the tabloid press, there was no privacy there.
When we were kids, if somebody said, 'What did you watch last night?' you would have said, 'BBC Two,' but now they'll just say, 'My mobile.'
I'm not certain that the BBC can claim to be making a wide enough range of distinctive programmes to make the case convincingly.
Really, I've been at the BBC too long and have spent too much time out on the road to worry about being judged as a clothes horse.
We concentrate too much on ethnic diversity and not enough on class. It's dead important to represent loads of different cultures. But what the BBC doesn't do enough of is thinking about getting people from more working-class backgrounds.
I do think the BBC could do more, but I've always thought the BBC could do more - I think there should be more arts programmes full stop.
'Podcasting House' is pivotal to the BBC's plan to scatter the seed of its various non-broadcast audio products beyond the narrow silos of the people who happen to listen to the programmes from which they arise.
I want the BBC to be a mass market public service broadcaster still funded by the licence fee... and the licence fee is more durable than many people in the commercial sector believe.
I've always been scared of advertising folk. I've met them at parties and I've been to their offices and I've always found them intimidatingly cool. At one company I visited, they held their meetings in a caravan that had somehow been installed in the place, a rather more exotic place to gather than the typical BBC glass box.
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.
There are too many organisations - and the BBC is a fabulous organisation - that seem to think it's OK to badger, hector and threaten people.
The Amazon lot are perfectly reasonable, level-headed people who just want to make TV programmes. I don't think they are the enemy of the BBC or the other way round. It's not a war; these things can coexist. We can have Amazon and Netflix and the BBC and BT Sport, and people can make choices. That's what modern life is all about.
Since becoming a BBC breakfast presenter I have been paid four-figure sums for doing hour-long speeches for associations and at awards dinners. That has been an eye-opener. I am surprised by how much people are willing to pay TV celebrities to do that kind of stuff.
I have written favourably in support of subsidy for the arts since the 1960s, and I continue to believe absolutely in subsidy, as I do in the BBC licence fee.
'Intrigue: Murder In The Lucky Holiday Hotel' is a podcast put together by the BBC's Carrie Gracie that investigates the story behind the death of British businessman Neil Heywood in the Chinese city of Chongqing in 2011.