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BBC Jennifer Saunders

Jennifer Saunders lashes out at BBC’s ‘executive idiots’

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By John Glenday, Reporter

October 8, 2013 | 2 min read

Comedian Jennifer Saunders has hit out against the BBC, accusing the broadcaster of being an ‘executive-run place for idiots.’

Saunders mounted her attack in Glamour magazine during an interview to promote her new autobiography, Bonkers: My Life in Laughs, in which she pointed out that life at the BBC was no laughing matter.

To illustrate her point Saunders spoke of a run-in with an unnamed ex-director general in who insisted on lavishing license fee money on expensive corporate lunches at London’s Ivy restaurant.

Saunders said: “It (the BBC) has become top-heavy in such an ugly way. They went corporate instead of being what they should be, which is a national resource, a place which trains people and curates the best programmes, and encourages talent and does great news and journalism.

“They just became a corporate, executive-run place for idiots.

“I mean, the new DG (Tony Hall) said he’d go through it with a knife and cut out loads of people. But I remember when it was fun to be there. They’d all be geeky and everybody in the building looked like they really knew something or were learning something and were happy to be there — even though they were paid so little.

“Now they have things like massive workshops for executives and heads of departments on decision-making and you think: 'If you’re the ------- head of a department at the BBC and you don’t know how to make a decision, why are you in that job? Who hired you? That’s the only thing that you have to do!’

““It got so annoying that you were called into these special lunches with the director-general at The Ivy and you were like: '--- off! This is the licence payers’ money! I’m paying for the car to take me there — we all are paying for that car. And I’d like an extra bit of budget on my programme please and less of your wheels!’ ”

BBC Jennifer Saunders

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