Greg Dyke

And then I went, I had to resign from ITV when, when that, this was agreed.

So I went and saw Greg Dyke, who obviously had the big profile since then, and at the time.

And he said, "Yeah, n- n-" I had two more years at ITV on a contract, I think.

And he said, "No, you, you can go." I was in his office in the old London Weekend building, and he got at me, b- big enough that he walked me to the door.

Well, we went to the PFA office in Manchester.

I wanna say his name was Peter Taylor, Greg Taylor, Greg Dyke, Greg Taylor.

Some- whatever, the, the head of the PFA at that time.

He was b- a bit worse for wear, but Ke- Kevin De Bruyne and Kyle Walker come, jump in.

The criticism of the BBC led to its chairman, director general and the correspondent who reported on this story all quitting the company.

Although as that Director General Greg Dyke has since said, 10 years on it is very difficult to find anyone who believes they did not sex up that document.

Meanwhile, Tom York, a noted critic of the Tony Blair government and anti-war protester, was writing this song.

He says he was drawn to the name Harrow Down Hill because it was poetic and sounded like the site of a historical battle.

And he said to me, oh, can we get Gary involved because we need a front person for this? And we understood if we were raising money from the locality that we would need somebody to do that.

So Gary agreed after getting permission from Greg Dyke and the various others.

But he would become the first person.

But he said, John, you've got to do that.

We're currently paying Olly Watkins.

yeah and what a way for at the end as well I mean Ollie Watkins biggest attribute was how hard he worked that was always the thing that marked him out above all our centre forwards and above all our centre forwards that Aston Villeneuve had as well was a very good player worked his socks off was an amazing outlet top scorer in the history of the club if you use the cut off point the moment when Rick Parry and Greg Dyke and Alan Sugar and Rupert Murdoch realised they could make more money what a better place to make the cut off The reality is he probably only scored as many goals as you would expect from an NN or centre forward.

Probably never actually got to those numbers except for one of the seasons when they were together.

Could he have played today? Of course he fucking could have played today.

In any other business, you think, "What are you gonna do?" We needed something radical.

[upbeat music] Around this time, David and the other four chairmen were approached by a TV executive called Greg Dyke.

He worked for the broadcaster ITV, who had the rights to show Football League matches on television between 1988 and 1992.

And he wanted to buy our television rights, just the five clubs' television rights, and of course, we said that was impractical because, you know, you've gotta play other clubs.

In any other business, you think, what are you going to do? We needed something radical.

Around this time, David and the other four chairmen were approached by a TV executive called Greg Dyke.

He worked for the broadcaster ITV, who had the rights to show Football League matches on television between 1988 and 1992.

And he wanted to buy our television rights, just the five clubs' television rights.