Quotes

I will be a short-haired person from now on. I think my hair has delighted the British public for long enough.

We need the BBC not only to celebrate and sanctify the past, we need it to use the documentary form to look at and take risks with the present.

I'm not a great writer. I am a writer who has moments.

Sometimes I am baffled by the lack of intellectual ambition in British television. Am I alone in feeling that there is not so much a dumbing down as a failure to engage at the highest level? British television is still led by some extremely able people, and yet at times they can seem like thoroughbreds happy to pull milk carts. Am I alone in believing that here, as elsewhere, trash television is welcomed because there are those in the opinion-forming seats who still feel that all television is trash, and all proofs to that absurd theory are welcome?

Bryan Cowgill was a feisty, original and immensely successful top television executive. He had the great talent of taking on other peoples' ideas, backing them and seeing them through, often to the benefit of all - most especially the viewers who were always his chief concern.

Proms attendances are going up and just try to get into the Tate Modern on a Saturday afternoon - but that is not reflected on BBC One. I want to ask BBC One to think again, because it just won't do. This is its major channel. This is for its largest tranche of viewers. This is where the biggest welt of the licence fee goes. Surely it can do better than that? I would say to Lorraine (Lorraine Heggessey) - it is not too difficult to pile on editions of EastEnders (1985) - why don't you make a real name for yourself by being the person who brings back arts documentaries?