John Whittingdale

That's all we have time for.

Thank you to all of my guests, George Parker, Catherine West, Sir John Whittingdale and Hannah Peaker.

And thank you for listening.

Do join us again next week once we know what's actually in John Healy's budget box.

There is no capability to conduct strikes, and therefore it is not something that we're seeking to present in any other way than it is.

That reply failed to convince another Conservative, Sir John Whittingdale.

The distinction between offensive and

defensive support is pretty fuzzy at best.

She'd kick her shoes off up in the flat in Number 10.

When Ian Gow was her political private secretary, parliamentary private secretary, I would go in and I'd hear her saying, No, Ian.

Did he really do that? And so, you know, she liked to laugh, but she didn't understand jokes.

I remember we wrote a speech for her and we put in it about the film E.T. at the time.

Anyway, so that was a spectrum.

So I covered two roles in Yes Minister, both Sir Humphrey and Bernard.

I started off in the treasury in 1962, and then I went first of all to number 10 under Ted Heath in 1972, and then I subsequently worked either as private secretary, Bernard, or as cabinet secretary, Sir Humphrey, first of all to Ted Heath, then to Harold Wilson, then to Margaret Thatcher, then to John Major, and finally I gave up under Tony Blair, or at least I was retired out under Tony Blair.

So what did you do during the Jim Callaghan years?

"It's not an absolute certainty when we start that the charter will be renewed at all." With no official levers to pull, the BBC must rely on diplomacy.

In 2016 to 2017, Tony Hall, the director general, met the then Secretary of State for Culture, John Whittingdale, or Whitto, as he called him when we spoke, for regular dinners one-on-one.

Whittingdale told me his officials hated that they met in private.

Other director generals have approached the dynamic rather differently.

The figures came despite the broadcaster's commitment to providing fair, clear, and competitive pay, while we know in sort of bureaucrat-speak what that actually means.

Former Culture Secretary John Whittingdale, who helped draw up the BBC's previous royal charter in 2016, said the corporation ought to be paying staff entirely on the basis of the value and merit they contribute for the job that they are doing.

Yeah, but what if the value is being black, Asian, or whatever other identity group? It's a hell

of a service they're providing then.