Yentob dragged into another Kids Co row
EX PENSES-LOVING Alan Yentob announced in December he had resigned as the BBC’s creative director in the wake of controversy over his role as chairman of scandal-hit Kids Company, but he appears reluctant to relinquish his influence at the Corporation.
i hear that Yentob, who continues to make and present programmes for the broadcaster, may have asked to be shown a preview of the channel’s documentary about Kids Company before it was broadcast on Wednesday.
The programme, Camila’s Kids Company: The inside Story laid bare the chaos at the charity, run by flamboyant Camila Batmanghelidjh with millions of pounds of taxpayers’ cash. it was closed down last summer after concerns were raised over how public money was being spent.
one reviewer noted that the documentary maker didn’t set out ‘to expose her subject as paranoid, narcissistic, belligerent, manipulative, self-pitying, evasive, irresponsible and needy. But Batmanghelidjh didn’t give her much other material to work with’.
it would not be the first time that Yentob, who was chairman of Kids Company during its financial mismanagement, has thrown his weight around at the BBC over programmes exposing the charity’s shortcomings. Hours before the Beeb’s flagship current affairs programme, Newsnight, prepared to broadcast a damning report into the charity’s government funding last July, Yentob is said to have telephoned the show.
Newsnight was about to reveal that government officials were withholding £3 million of funding from Kids Company unless Batmanghelidjh stepped down. Yentob, who was paid £330,000 per year as creative director and imagine presenter, did not stop there.
The following morning, he joined Batmanghelidjh at the studios of Radio 4’s Today programme when she was interviewed. Yentob was not invited to the interview and did not speak on air. He just ‘turned up and stood at the back of the cubicle’, a source claimed. ‘We weren’t expecting him. it was a bit odd.’
Yentob insisted there was no conflict of interest in his decision to call the programme, adding that he had not ‘abused my position at the BBC’.
So did Yentob ask to see the latest documentary before it was broadcast and make inquiries about its content?
A spokesman for Alan Yentob says: ‘Mr Yentob did not attempt in any way to influence or interfere with the broadcast. Unlike most of the media, he did not see the programme in advance and indeed still has not seen it.’