Amid lurid speculation, the decision has been taken with unusual speed in the last days of Tim Davie’s regime as director general – and it appears to be final
In a valedictory podcast appearance, Tim Davie, whose resignation as BBC director general takes final effect on 2 April, thanked his neighbours for smuggling him out through their gardens when the media were camped outside his house during various BBC scandals.
After Monday’s sudden announcement that the Radio 2 breakfast show presenter Scott Mills had been summarily sacked over a so-far unspecified failure of “personal conduct”, Davie may be relieved that he has only three more days of running with his head ducked past next door’s rhododendrons.
It seems unlikely, though, that Davie would have taken this dramatic decision without consulting Rhodri Talfan Davies, who takes over as the interim DG from Friday until 18 May, when the former Google boss Matt Brittin assumes the job permanently (or as much as that word can apply, in a media job that has frequently been an ejector seat).
The aim of announcing Mills’s departure this week may be to isolate it as the last furore of the Davie regime and leave his successors a clean copybook to blot. Certainly, the decision seems to have been taken with considerable speed.
