Recent events at the BBC have convinced me that nothing is sacred any more.
There are things that we have taken for granted for years and deemed as reliable as the Greenwich Time signal or the fact if you see an empty space in a crowded car park, when you get there it has a tiny car or motorbike parked in it.
They say a change is as good as a rest, for some reason I have never understood.
Very few changes are relaxing in my experience and even fewer for the better.
Most yield disappointment and chaos rather than send us off with a smile on our faces. Changes in the way we get to see our doctor, changes in the way we can speak to those who provide essential services or sell us stuff, changes in travel provisions or parking – none of them have made life easier for us rather than ‘them’ over the last few years. And now what has the BBC done?
It has allowed one of its most iconic programmes to be deprived of one of its most integral and essential components. Blowers is leaving Test Match Special.
It was his decision, but they could have quadrupled his stipend surely and retained that joyful voice and his innocent wonder at such prosaic sights as pigeons and buses passing cricket grounds.
He and his colleagues on that most British of programmes – ‘Johnners’ the late Brian Johnston, ‘Aggers’ Jonathan Agnew and (for different reasons) Geoffrey Boycott have over the years done more to make me laugh than many comedians.
And now the delightful Henry Blofeld is off to enjoy his wine cellar and garden and only dream of cranes and aeroplanes passing by. On behalf of the thousands who loved his old school style of commentary ‘Farewell and thank you Blowers’.
But not all changes are bad and the BBC has announced one this week that is a bold and very welcome step in the right direction. I am about to become a woman.
Well if all we Doctors are the same person that is the case. I like to think I have always been in touch with my feminine side and therefore whole heartedly applaud the arrival of a very good actor, Jodie Whittaker – who happens to be female – as the beneficiary of the excellent Peter Capaldi’s decision to hand the Tardis over to a thirteenth incarnation.
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