In Jonathan Dimbleby’s view, there is no bigger crisis facing the BBC. While the corporation battles lesser dilemmas – including the future of the licence fee and the royal charter – the veteran broadcaster joined other heavyweights to make an unprecedented plea to Robert Peston to resist the siren calls of ITV.
On Friday, Dimbleby, the news anchor Huw Edwards and Nicholas Parsons, presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Just a Minute, made a spoof appeal on air to the economics editor – offering him their own jobs if he turns down an offer to become ITV’s political editor.
“This is a very serious situation,” said Dimbleby on BBC Radio 4’s PM, the news programme presented by Eddie Mair – whose tongue-in-cheek feud with Peston has become a familiar fixture to his listeners.
The intervention came after it emerged that the BBC director general, Tony Hall, became involved in trying to persuade Peston to stay.
It is understood that ITV has offered him not only the role of political editor, replacing Tom Bradby who will be the main presenter of ITV’s News at Ten, but also a Sunday morning politics show.
According to sources Peston was set to accept an offer from the BBC to remain with the corporation and become one of Newsnight’s presenters in addition to staying on as economics editor. But now, according to insiders, ITV wants him for the dual roles. It is not known if the Sunday morning political show would be pitched directly against Andrew Marr’s BBC1 programme.
His unusually public job negotiations have rumbled on through this week.
Mair, meanwhile, confessed on Friday to his distress at the thought of Peston leaving the BBC, telling listeners, with a deadpan delivery, that it “makes me want to cry my eyes out … literally”.
He added: “I want to publicly offer, right now, to stand aside as presenter of PM and offer my job to Robert as part of his clearly burgeoning portfolio of programmes and, what’s more, as money might be a factor too, I’m also willing to sell one of my kidneys … if it helps increase the money that the BBC can afford to offer.”
Mair said he had contacted other BBC figures to ask what they would be willing to do to help.
First up was Parsons, who told him that the BBC must offer Peston a regular guest slot on Just a Minute. “I think [it] would induce a man to stay with the organisation,” he said.
Next came Dimbleby, who told the programme: “The BBC has a lot of problems, we know, but this is the biggest crisis that I have heard about. Robert, it’s not easy for me to say this, but I am willing to give up Any Questions if that will keep you at the BBC. And there is one additional advantage from your point of view, which I think not only is it a wonderful programme but also no one worries about hairstyle, ties or shambolic dressing. I think you will find yourself very much at home. It’s yours for the taking if you stay.”
An even more sombre intervention came from Edwards, one of the most prominent faces of the BBC’s flagship News at Ten, who told Mair: “I can’t contemplate a future in the BBC without Rob ranting on endlessly about his earth-shattering scoops.
“Yeah, if he wants to present the Ten, let him ... on one condition, I can be the studio guest when he is presenting. I can come in and rant on endlessly and see how he feels about that.”
Edwards added: “But anyway, a bit of me thinks that he is perfect for ITV … him and that Tom Bradbury … they are a match made in heaven.”
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