Presentation details

Ben Webster in The Times reports that the BBC has got itself into a right tangle over investigating pay-offs to former BBC1 Controller Peter Fincham, who we all thought fell voluntarily on his sword over the very misleading Queen documentary trailer, and former Controller Radio 2, Lesley Douglas, who we all thought did the same, though under more pressure, over Sachsgate.

Director General Tony Hall asked for ("demanded" according to The Guardian) a "detailed briefing"; now, says Webster, that briefing might be "verbal", to avoid discovery under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act - or a request to "hand it over" by the Public Accounts Committee. A BBC spokesman admits that the form of the presentation to the DG has not yet been decided.

Here are some forms of presentation that might be under consideration.

1) Give Us A Clue:  James Purnell hosts a cheery internal version of the popular parlour game, in which Lucy Adams is presented with a card, and mimes the contents to a sofa of Tony Hall, Jessica Cecil and Anne Bulford. Chortle as she struggles with "non-contractual".

2) Sleep-learning. The DG carbs up on a few Heston From Waitrose ready-meals, then lies down blindfold in the Executive Pilates room, on the Camp-bed of Non-Discoverable Assimilation of Facts. Tapes of You and Yours help him to drift off, then anonymous maidens of the Executive Support Unit enter to chant details of Lucy's findings, from scripts written on rice paper; as he awakes, they exit, chewing furiously.

3) DMI Encoding. The verbal briefing is recorded into the remaining working bits of Fabric, and in an irreversible secret Rivera process, meta-tagged to within an inch of its life, upscaled, pushed into 16:9, pixellated, transferred to VHS and handed to the DG.to watch, in an ante-chamber to the Hadron Bulk Eraser...