CHRIS TITLEY meets a legendary BBC figure from a showbusiness family.
BILL Cotton is far too much of a gentleman to launch a full-scale attack on the BBC. This is, after all, an institution he still loves, despite now being chairman of commercial television station Meridian.
But he is also a straight-talker. And Mr Cotton didn't hide his feelings about the recent BBC revolution during his visit to York last week.
"I think it's been truly a decade of enormous change - most of which I personally wouldn't agree with," he said, before his talk at the Dean Court Hotel Literary Lunch. "A great deal of it is being changed back now."
The inference is clear. John Birt's reign as director general, with its emphasis on management structures and efficient accountancy, did not meet with Mr Cotton's approval. Indeed, he even talked of Mr Birt "riding roughshod" over the BBC governors in forcing through his programme of change.
But York University old boy Greg Dyke, the new DG, is more to Mr Cotton's liking.
"I think he realises it's no good having a national broadcaster with a licence fee if it's not making programmes of quality. He's much more programme-oriented.
"The BBC is always capable of making good programmes. The producers are roughly the same people as they have always been. They have to be given the ability and the resources and the will to make decent programmes.
"If they are constantly being asked to make programmes down to price, that's what you'll get, programmes down to price."
The BBC would be wise to listen to these views. Mr Cotton had something of a Midas touch when he was head of light entertainment and later managing director of BBC Television.
Among the talents whose careers he boosted were Morecambe & Wise, Cilla Black, The Two Ronnies, Mike Yarwood and Terry Wogan. It was no coincidence that the golden age of British television happened under his leadership.
He looks back with greatest fondness to The Morecambe and Wise Show, particularly their Christmas specials. The 1977 special drew 27 million viewers.
These were heady days, but long gone. "I wasn't yesterday's man, I was the day before yesterday's man. But a lot of the programmes made by the day before yesterday's man are still being shown," he says, eyes twinkling.
Mr Cotton was at the Dean Court Hotel to talk about his book, Double Bill. He was reluctant to write his memoirs at first. But then a friend suggested a format that appealed to him.
"We had this programme on Radio 2 called Double Bill, me talking about my father. He said you have got to write a book about this relationship and about the BBC and about your part in it.
"That appealed to me. It meant I didn't have to write about my school days or my army days."
His father was the legendary band leader Billy Cotton. "He was my hero as a boy. Who wouldn't have hero-worshipped a father who played professional football, raced a car in a Grand Prix, flew an aeroplane from Croydon, made 100 runs at cricket?"
Mr Cotton, at 70, has now lived longer than his father, but he is still applying the lessons learned at his elbow. "He was one of only two band leaders, with Joe Loss, who kept his band throughout and paid them every week," he recalled.
When Billy Cotton had a stroke he was advised to get rid of the band. He balked at the suggestion, saying: "I didn't share all my good luck with them. I don't intend to share all my bad luck."
Mr Cotton junior built a similar team spirit at the BBC.
"That's a very, very hard thing to recreate. What the last decade has done is send a lot of very good talent into the independent sector where they are more worried about their fees than they are about individual programmes, and they have to be."
Pressed to name his favourite current BBC shows, he struggles, first describing what he doesn't like. "I don't enjoy soaps much. I don't enjoy too many shows that involve members of the public making idiots of themselves."
What he does enjoy is "anything with Rowan Atkinson in - his show the Thin Blue Line was very good. And Absolutely Fabulous had marvellous moments."
Mr Cotton feels that the Beeb dishes up fewer marvellous moments these days, but it is still worth preserving.
"It's a unique place, the BBC. It's the only one of its kind in the world."
Double Bill: 80 Years Of Entertainment by Bill Cotton is published by Fourth Estate, price £17.99.
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