YouSaid · the spoken record

Greg Dyke

lines on the record: 37
first: 2007-05-20
most recent: 2007-05-20
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Greg Dyke, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs. You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio 4.”
2007-05-20 · Desert Island Discs · Greg Dyke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You can have the complete works of Dylan Thomas. The other one's just too useful, I'm afraid. And what about your luxury?”
2007-05-20 · Desert Island Discs · Greg Dyke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and country house. So of course we give you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. What other book are you going to take with you to the island?”
2007-05-20 · Desert Island Discs · Greg Dyke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You do now, of course, make a, I'm sure, a perfectly good living from you wrote this book. You're still involved in business. You make, as you say, the old television program you do after dinner speeches. But it must surely get your goat that you're not at the centre of things. You're a man who thrives at being at the centre of things.”
2007-05-20 · Desert Island Discs · Greg Dyke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think we've established that you are this very passionate individual and you're somebody who engages head on with things and that in essence up until that point had been your great success. Do you think when it came to being Director General of the BBC it was that passion, that engagement that actually ended up scuppering the job that you should have done?”
2007-05-20 · Desert Island Discs · Greg Dyke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The Hudden Report then, as you've said, was set up to look into all the circumstances surrounding David Kelly's death. Some people at the time were critical of you because they said that you were too sketchy on the detail, that when it came to being questioned about particular dates and particular wording and particular memos, you seemed a little at sea in the circumstances.”
2007-05-20 · Desert Island Discs · Greg Dyke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Did you at any point feel that in some way the BBC had contributed to the pressure that was put on one single individual, a pressure that in the end, for whatever reason he felt unable to bear?”
2007-05-20 · Desert Island Discs · Greg Dyke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now, of course, as you said yourself, things went from being ill tempered and high octane to being dramatically sinister. David Kelly disappeared from home. There were search parties sent out to try and find him and then his body was found some miles from home. How did you hear, first of all, that he had gone missing?”
2007-05-20 · Desert Island Discs · Greg Dyke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It seems that it got, as a bystander, it seems that it got incredibly personal between you and Downing Street, and by Downing Street here, of course, I mean Alistair Campbell. Was there a sense in which both of your personalities were too equally matched? These were two big guns, a couple of macho men who really felt that they couldn't walk away, that they had to slug it out with each other”
2007-05-20 · Desert Island Discs · Greg Dyke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But the complaints that you had from Alistair Campbell, did you decide to take it on? I mean, the BBC had a complaints procedure. You could have kicked it into.”
2007-05-20 · Desert Island Discs · Greg Dyke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Meatloaf and that out of hell. So Greg Dyke, you are, of course, steeped in all the comings and goings of what happened at that time, but it's worth just reminding everyone else. The government had published this first dossier in september two thousand two. The purpose of that was intended to bring together intelligence information about Saddam Hussein's regime and included a claim that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction that could be prepared for use within 45 minutes. And it was that claim that Andrew Gilligan, the BBC review, received that led Alistair Campbellblair's spin doctrine chief at the time to get on your case. What was it he wanted”
2007-05-20 · Desert Island Discs · Greg Dyke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're slightly ahead of ourselves because we're talking now about your leaving. We need to talk about the manner of your leaving in some detail because it is fascinating. But first let's take a break for some music. What have you chosen?”
2007-05-20 · Desert Island Discs · Greg Dyke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And do you see those things as we've just talked about as the most significant things that you left behind when you left the BBC?”
2007-05-20 · Desert Island Discs · Greg Dyke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wanted to ask you about that. I mean, to people outside broadcasting, that seems relatively unimportant, but what you did, you were very fleet of foot. You said, well, if you don't want Use At 10, we do. And it astonished people at the time.”
2007-05-20 · Desert Island Discs · Greg Dyke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Its importance to talk about your successes, one of them being, I mean, you did reinvigorate the staff and as you have said earlier, people felt a good deal more optimism and passion and connection with the creativity, which is the lifeblood of a broadcasting organization, but also Freeview was one of your big ideas and one of your big successes. And this was where essentially you took on Sky and said, well, what you can do, maybe we can't do better, but we can offer people an alternative.”
2007-05-20 · Desert Island Discs · Greg Dyke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You don't think that people thought, well, you know, he seems, I mean, you weren't really an East Den boy, but to some people you could be perceived as an East End boy.”
2007-05-20 · Desert Island Discs · Greg Dyke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ella Fitzgerald with Louis Armstrong in summertime and memories there, Greg Dyke for you of singing lullabies to both of your children when they were just tiny in those first years. You were, of course, this big industry success story. You'd made your wad at LWT, you'd turned around TVAM. But in 1999, when there was talk of who would be the next Director General of the BBC, your name was met with a huge snort of derision from some quarters. I don't think it would be too much to say. What was the problem?”
2007-05-20 · Desert Island Discs · Greg Dyke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You are, of course, also famously the man who put a rat on a sinking ship. You went to TVAM. And when TVM had started, it had rather high-minded ideals. We had people like Anna Ford and Peter J and David Frost. You brought in little furry puppets and people with flashy jumpers and made it all a rather different proposition. What was the thinking behind that?”
2007-05-20 · Desert Island Discs · Greg Dyke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And when LWT finally met its end, you made a tidy sum of money that would sort of free you up in the future to do what you wanted.”
2007-05-20 · Desert Island Discs · Greg Dyke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bob Dylan and like a rolling stone you joined LWT then, Greg Dyke, as a researcher, you were thirty this was about the same time as it happened that your marriage was breaking down. It wasn't a shoe in that you got the job because somebody said on your interview notes I understand are a bit of a pain in the arts. Was she right? I mean, are you a bit of a pain in the ars?”
2007-05-20 · Desert Island Discs · Greg Dyke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let's rewind then to this little political foray that you had, where you got a bit of a bloody nose and you realised that politics actually wasn't for you, that indeed, as you've described, it seemed a bit of a lucky escape. You were around about 30 at this point. You were married, you were unemployed. I mean, you couldn't have felt very optimistic about what life had to offer at that particular stage.”
2007-05-20 · Desert Island Discs · Greg Dyke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But you gave me a beautiful politician's answer there. I mean, you said I don't think it'll happen, but you haven't counted it out.”
2007-05-20 · Desert Island Discs · Greg Dyke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You say that with a sense of complete dread in your voice. I mean, very recently, of course, you have been mentioned as a possible mayoral candidate for London standing against Ken Livingston. Has that been completely shelved, that idea, or are you still at least mulling it over?”
2007-05-20 · Desert Island Discs · Greg Dyke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The Beatles and Strawberry Fields Forever. You had your degree in politics, then, Greg Dyke, and you were attracted in the seventies then to a life in politics. You turned, I understand, a Labour majority of four thousand into a conservative one of seven thousand. It wasn't altogether successful.”
2007-05-20 · Desert Island Discs · Greg Dyke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I'm interested in that because given that you were 24, a good deal older than a lot of the students you were mixing with, did you feel that it properly did educate you or was it simply an experience, a life experience that was worth having?”
2007-05-20 · Desert Island Discs · Greg Dyke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But in the end it did have its limitations and you knew that you were starting to get restless again. I mean you went to York University and took degrees in politics.”
2007-05-20 · Desert Island Discs · Greg Dyke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and from the moment you started learning how to be a journalist you knew that the glove fitted. You thought, yep, this is me, this is where I belong, these are the people I like.”
2007-05-20 · Desert Island Discs · Greg Dyke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You find yourself a job at the Hillingdon Mirror was your first job in journalism. How did you know that that was what you wanted”
2007-05-20 · Desert Island Discs · Greg Dyke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That didn't stop me at all. I just once I got into journalism, which is what I went into. When I was quite young I just loved it and I just relished at doing different things and new things. I just wanted to Do more just rail against everything, take on everything Tell me about your second track. Well, my second track goes right back to my childhood. In our house Buddy Holly was I have one brother six years old Buddy Holly fan, and therefore we were all Buddy Holly fans. The buddy Holly song I've chosen is it doesn't matter anymore, which of course came out roughly the same time as Buddy Holly died and of course Would”
2007-05-20 · Desert Island Discs · Greg Dyke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everybody's Put up your val Bought up with humour. We brought up quite competitively. academically because None of those were academic stars But I mean, winning at football for my father was much more important than whether you paste your. Did you have an ambition bubbling under then at any point when you were a young boy? Yes, I always didn't want to be. I made up my mind very early on in my life I was not going to be like everybody else. And that did mean getting out of suburban London. To do different things. It sounded from what you said that you had a strong sense, maybe not clearly identified in your mind's eye as a child and a teenager, but a strong sense that you didn't want what your parents had. I was always determined. I'd not done well at school.”
2007-05-20 · Desert Island Discs · Greg Dyke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“which I thought there might be some truth in that. I don't know where it came from. I came from a sort of fairly ordinary background in West London, so it was a suburban background. We owned our own house. We had a car. I was a very young kid, we were the only people in the street. A telephone because my dad was an insurance salesman. was Secure background. What sort of people were mum and dad? Mother's family were My father's family were publicans. I think Married had three sons, and their life was about bringing up those kids. So it was a sort of modest, proper, straightforward upbringing that you had. What ambitions did they have for you and your siblings They certainly brought us With a set My dad was one of the Meet who would go out and talk to the Belief in life was”
2007-05-20 · Desert Island Discs · Greg Dyke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Boose Brings together. though I promised them But I The first Think the Springsteen am born to run in your autobiography, Greg, you write about grabbing life's opportunities. You are one of life's grabbers, it seems to me you sort of run at life and take on what it's got to give. I think that's right. Your own life, you look at what the opportunities that come to you and you either take them or you don't. got to have the confidence to just grab what you're doing. can and do the things you want to do. And it does take a huge amount of confidence, I'm wondering where that confidence began. Well, it's interesting. One of my former colleagues at London Weekend Television once said to me, look, the only reason that you can't You've been successful. That you don't have enough imagination to imagine failure.”
2007-05-20 · Desert Island Discs · Greg Dyke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have gone anywhere in a couple of years. parties and the rest of it. Instead, I left with the staff on the street. Talk in great detail about the BBC also about Hutton in a little while before we do that, but tell me about your first piece of music. Of my Said to me, Greg, I hope. not going to embarrass the family.”
2007-05-20 · Desert Island Discs · Greg Dyke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Remarkably that evening you decided to go out to dinner. Did you have much of an appetite at all? Yes, the My partner had been Joe and I went and sat in a restaurant, and actually it was quite a Were there any tears And what made it such a strange day was.”
2007-05-20 · Desert Island Discs · Greg Dyke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The chairman at the time of the BBC Gavin Davis had said that when he read it, he knew one thing and that was that somebody was going to have to resign. Did the same thing occur to you? Did it occur to you that you may have to resign? No, I never thought But I never thought”
2007-05-20 · Desert Island Discs · Greg Dyke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think people It was Thursday the twenty ninth of january 2004. I'm sure you remember it well. That was the day that you handed in your resignation. Only one day before you had had the opportunity to see Lord Hutton's report for the first time, just to remind people that was the inquiry that the government had set up into the death of the scientist David Kelly. Do you remember what your feelings were when you read that report for the first time?”
2007-05-20 · Desert Island Discs · Greg Dyke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive for rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The program was originally broadcast in two thousand seven. My castaway this week is Greg Dyke, a top flight TV executive known for being instinctual, populist and balshy. His appointment as BBC Director General at the end of the nineties was an uncharacteristically bold move for the corporation and an extraordinary moment for a man who, as a youngster, was once marked out by his teachers as the boy least likely to succeed. However, his departure four years later was a great deal more spectacular. The passion and impulsiveness that served him so well at LWT and TVAM proved his undoing at the BBC, when a bitter row erupted with Downing Street over the corporation's coverage of the Iraq War, amid considerable mudslinging, ill temper and tragedy he was forced to resign, prompting a huge display of loyalty from his staff, as thousands gathered on the steps of the corporation to wish him a tearful goodbye. One of the masters memorably, Craig Dyke, hid a short, bold man with a speech.”
2007-05-20 · Desert Island Discs · Greg Dyke · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source