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BBC boss says word ‘talent’ banned as workplace culture review begins

Tim Davie says corporation is committed to change after series of scandals including that surrounding Huw Edwards

Tim Davie

The BBC director general has said he has “kind of banned” referring to its high-profile staff as “talent” as the corporation grapples with the fallout from controversies involving a number of senior presenters.

Tim Davie was speaking after the BBC launched an independent review of its workplace culture after scandals including the one surrounding the disgraced presenter Huw Edwards.

Other controversies have included a furore over the welfare of contestants on the 2023 season of Strictly Come Dancing, and the sacking of the presenter Jermaine Jenas after complaints about his workplace conduct.

Speaking to Nick Robinson on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Davie said no one at the corporation was “indispensable”. He told Robinson: “We often refer to people like yourself as talent, but I’ve kind of banned that. You’re a presenter, I’m a leader of the organisation, and we’re here to serve.

“I do think over the last decade or so we’ve seen fundamental changes in the culture in this industry, and it hasn’t been completely unique [to the BBC that] those that have had power in places can often use that in bad ways. I think the BBC is utterly committed – you see us acting in good faith to get at this [issue] – and I would say [it is] important that everyone is treated equally regardless of rank.”

The corporation last week announced the start of an independent review into its workplace culture by Grahame Russell, the executive chair and founder of the management consultancy Change Associates.

The review would “be helpful for us” in “sorting this culture”, Davie said, adding: “It’s about how people deploy power in a workplace, we’ve all seen it, it’s not unique to the BBC. Many good or bad things happen in the new age, but one thing we should take comfort from is that things are improving. People need to speak up and everyone at every level needs to be heard.”

The BBC boss was also asked if there had been progress on Edwards returning the estimated £200,000 salary he was paid between his arrest and leaving the corporation in April. He said there had been “some dialogue with the lawyers, but we’re yet to resolve that issue”, and suggested he was waiting for Edwards to respond.

Asked if he believed the money would be returned, Davie said: “I think the ball is clearly not in my court on that one.”

Edwards pleaded guilty in July to three counts of making indecent images of children, having accessed indecent photographs of children as young as seven that were sent to him by a convicted paedophile. He was given a six-month suspended prison sentence.

Davie was speaking before a speech to the Future Resilience Forum in London, where he appealed to the government to bolster funding of the World Service amid what he called an “all-out assault on truth worldwide” by hostile states and others.

“Bad actors” such as Russia were already moving into the void left by the loss of audiences for the BBC World Service by setting up in places such as Lebanon to pump out “unchallenged propaganda”, said Davie, as he warned that the stakes were high. “We are at a moment of choice. A choice to step aside and allow disinformation to destabilise our societies and disrupt our democracies. Or to fight back and pursue truth.”

We just don’t trust Strictly anymore

The famous "magic" relies solely upon the audience’s belief in the show as a place of secure, escapist delight

As someone who relies on Strictly during the winter months the way others might rely on a 10,000 lux SAD lamp, I had optimistically hoped that once Dave Arch and his orchestra had tuned up and southern Hertfordshire’s spray tanners had been conscripted and Claudia Winkleman had peeked wryly and reassuringly through her fringe, we would be able to start afresh and enjoy it with impunity.

I have maintained, throughout its grim summer of scandal, throughout the allegations and the investigations, and despite dark clouds over the future of this series, that come autumn we would once again be transported to somewhere happy and special and safe while the contestants gurned through their Charlestons or blithely Quickstepped to “Puttin’ On the Ritz”.

The BBC would clean up its act – it has to, this is Strictly – get some chaperones in, introduce some new professionals, stop the rot, and we would allow ourselves to be cocooned until Christmas in this joyful, playful little world where I, at least, belong. Many claimed it was doomed, that the magic was lost for ever. That is a future inconceivable to me.

Obviously, I was naïve. Because our fixation with Strictly – which has for many years been hysterical and totally disproportionate for a celebrity dance competition – has reached the point where it is no longer merely backstage rumours that threaten to derail the show but now every episode is dissected for evidence of the production’s institutionalised toxicity. Everything that is not slick, planned or perfect is proof of unsavoury behaviour, of souring relationships, of another brewing scandal it cannot afford.

I’m referring this time to opera singer and presenter Wynne Evans and his professional dance partner Katya Jones, who have reassured the public that they were joking around when, on Saturday night’s show, cameras captured first her moving his hand from her waist, across which it appeared to be creeping, and then later her snubbing his high-five and scowling at him.

Watch the videos for yourself – everyone else is. In fact I can currently see in the corner of my eye the clips being replayed on ITV News, a sign that, when it comes to Strictly, the kind of thing that might once have made a tabloid gossip item is now elevated to an incident of national importance.

The BBC says its welfare team has investigated the apparent tension between them and will not be proceeding further. Jones said in an Instagram post that “even the idea that it made me feel uncomfortable or offended me in any way is complete nonsense”.

And Evans said on his Monday morning Radio Wales show that he was heartbroken. “Katya and I are really, really close; we’re really good friends and, on Saturday night, we made a stupid joke. It was a stupid joke that went wrong. We thought it was funny. It wasn’t funny. It has been totally misinterpreted.”

Tricky one. Either you believe them, move on and everyone keeps dancing – because after all, these couples literally have to touch each other all the time and develop intense relationships quickly and there may well have been nothing out of the ordinary in either party’s demeanour.

Or, like those in the more vocal corners of social media, you believe that these denials are the result of some hasty diktat from a panicking production executive on high trying to avoid another PR disaster concerning men’s treatment of women on this programme; that we’ve heard of “rifts” between couples before that, too often, have indeed ended up being signs of something more sinister; or at the very least that Jones is the victim of a handsy bloke who is rightly being called out on the greatest and most public stage possible, the BBC’s flagship family show.

The brief footage is uneasy, and certainly awkward. And though I do think that as an engine of popular entertainment and with incredible influence, scrutiny of Strictly is well-justified, the only conclusion us spectators can draw from all this has nothing to do with the relationship between Wynne and Jones but about ourselves: we just don’t trust Strictly anymore.

No matter how well-oiled the machine or how sparkly the dancefloor or how reliably crap are Tess’s jumpsuits, the famous “magic” of this show relies, in the end, solely upon its audience’s belief in it as a place of secure, escapist delight.

This year, we watch in the knowledge of how much of that escapism and delight has been under false pretences. And that is something that will take a lot more than a few weeks of jolly group numbers to forget.