David Dimbleby: Christopher Stevens reviews last night’s TV

Days That Shook The BBC With David Dimbleby 

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Rosie Jones’s Trip Hazard

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Say what you like about the BBC but it knows how to nurse a grudge. 

Four decades after Mrs Thatcher reined in its excesses, Auntie cannot hide her loathing for the Iron Lady.

The first half hour of David Dimbleby’s retrospective, Days That Shook The BBC (BBC2), was one long howl of indignant rage at Maggie. ‘Whenever Thatcher looked at the BBC, there seemed to be trouble,’ fumed the Beeb’s erstwhile political anchor.

The first half hour of David Dimbleby’s retrospective, Days That Shook The BBC (BBC2), was one long howl of indignant rage at Maggie

He refused to concede she had any right to veto a sympathetic documentary in 1985 about the home life of IRA chief-of-staff Martin McGuinness.

Less than a year after the Brighton bombing, the terrorist leader was depicted with his children round the breakfast table, spoon-feeding a toddler. 

It was perceived by many at the time as a blatant piece of anti-Government propaganda — and Dimbleby is still astonished that the Government had the gall to fight back.

More extraordinary still was his resentment at the Royal Family. This, remember, is the man who danced with Princess Diana at a house party — she dubbed him Dimble-Toes — and also led TV coverage of her funeral.

He has commentated for the BBC at the Queen’s Golden, Diamond and Platinum jubilees. And yet he says: ‘There has been a kind of taboo in the BBC about monarchy. Every other institution can be challenged but the monarchy has been deemed unassailable. In my experience the BBC is more scared of the Palace than it is of No 10.’

His grievance appears to be rooted in the humiliation heaped on the Beeb last year after it was revealed the infamous interview with Diana was achieved by fraud.

Despite the BBC’s pledge that the interview would not be aired again, Dimbleby argued he should be allowed to replay excerpts in this programme. Instead, we saw two blurred screengrabs.

He was clearly irritated to be over-ruled. ‘She may have been improperly persuaded,’ he said, ‘but I do think what she said is important and should be heard.’

There was no acknowledgement that statements obtained under false pretences by Martin Bashir, when she had been tricked into mistrusting the people closest to her, were automatically invalid.

Dimbleby settled one old score. For more than half a century, he has chafed at ex-Labour PM Harold Wilson’s refusal in 1971 to answer a trivial question about payment for his memoirs.

It was perceived by many at the time as a blatant piece of anti-Government propaganda — and Dimbleby is still astonished that the Government had the gall to fight back

Wilson took offence and demanded the footage was cut. All these years later, Dimbleby took his revenge, and showed the whole sequence — without the awareness to point out the irritability may have been an early symptom of the dementia that would end his career.

Such a petty disagreement over one question was hardly a ‘day that shook the BBC’.

This three-part series would be better titled Dimble-Toes Gets Even.

A better title for Rosie Jones’s Trip Hazard (C4) might be National Liability — narrator Joanna Lumley’s nickname for the comic, who has cerebral palsy.

A better title for Rosie Jones’s Trip Hazard (C4) might be National Liability — narrator Joanna Lumley’s nickname for the comic, who has cerebral palsy

Joanna’s quip supplied the only good laugh of the hour, as Rosie and guest Guz Kahn visited Blackpool. They had their fortunes read on the seafront by Gypsy Petulengro, before embarking on a sky-dive.

Guz didn’t fancy it and pulled out at the last minute. As he’d refused to ride on the rollercoaster, this can’t have come as a shock to the producers.

It’s great to see a presenter with a serious physical disability tackling daredevil challenges. But the show relies too heavily on ad libs. It needs a script.