Now the BBC is in trouble and there is no one to come to its aid. In the final irony, its own rules on impartiality forbid it from campaigning against its own evisceration.Two years ago I hosted a lunch for Michael Grade where he explained his plans for revising BBC governance.

After he talked amusingly and entertainingly about the corporation, I asked him if he planned to introduce any democratic accountability into the way the BBC was run. After all people could vote on the BBC on how lottery money was spent to restore old buildings – why not about broadcast spending and resource priorities?

He laughed, and so did everyone else, dismissing the question charmingly. Did I really want to “politicise” (the word was uttered with suitable disdain) the BBC?

Well, yes, actually. I was dumb enough to think that mobilising viewers to decide on its priorities might also protect it from predatory politicians, and any excesses of public sector complacency of its own corporate culture.

What a shame that the BBC – so innovative in many ways – lacked the ambition and imagination to innovate in its most fundamental relationship: the one with licence-fee payers.

It’s not wholly Grade’s fault. Successive regimes have been happy to play the British administrative game of governance by the great and good – invited to apply, appointed through committee – you know the score. It saps any vitality from institutions, whilst ensuring that they endure, or linger successfully. Sir Michael Lyons is its creature. Even his knighthood betokens a certain number of key performance indicators slain.

Now the BBC is in trouble and there is no one to come to its aid. In the final irony, its own rules on impartiality forbid it from campaigning against its own evisceration.

Reviewing the twilight of state broadcasting in the Weimar Republic which was not only popular, but according to historian Eric Weitz “informative, moral and uplifting,” one author noted this of its listeners:

A public deprived of power: four million listeners pay and keep quiet

An epitaph for us, the audience.