Yentob forced to hand over Kids Company letters

THOSE pesky questions about Alan Yentob’s time chairing the controversial charity Kids Company just won’t go away — and the BBC’s former creative chief is still angry about the scandal that cost him his £183,000-a-year job.

I can disclose that in recent days investigators have asked Yentob, (pictured), to hand over all his correspondence with his fellow Kids Company trustees and the 2,400 organisations working on behalf of Kids Company, which collapsed last summer amid allegations of financial mismanagement. ‘The idea [the charity] was not well-run is just ridiculous,’ he tells me this week. ‘I’m very angry about the whole thing and the way it was dealt with — not that there aren’t things to ask questions about.’

These questions — currently being scrutinised by the Charity Commission — include allegations that £5,000 a month of charity funds went on renting a Grade II-listed mansion in London, where its charismatic founder, Camila Batmanghelidjh, liked to swim in an indoor pool.

Reviewers said Batmanghelidjh came across as ‘belligerent and manipulative’ in the BBC’s recent documentary on Kids Company. But Yentob — forced to resign from the BBC over a conflict of interest caused by his roles at Kids Company and the corporation — claims Batmanghelidjh was under stress.

‘She [Camila] was undergoing stress and pressure so she was being quite bullish and a lot of people didn’t like that,’ he says.

He also reveals he is fighting off offers from publishers. ‘If you write a memoir, and you write the whole truth, then you’re going to betray certain people and I don’t want to do that,’ he says. Heaven forbid.