Alan Yentob: My Life in Media

Alan Yentob, 60, is the BBC's creative Director. He has spent his entire working life at the corporation and acted as Controller of both BBC1 and BBC2. He created the arts programmes Omnibus, Arena and Imagine, which he still presents. In this week's programme he watches Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett put together their opera for the Manchester International Festival. Yentob is also chair of the board of BBC Films, the ICA and the charity Kids Company. He and his partner, television producer Philippa Walker, have two children.

What inspired you to embark on a career in the media?

Television was growing up in the 1950s and came of age in the Sixties. So we grew up together. By the mid to late Sixties TV had become the shop window for the counterculture and was, consequently, irresistible. In my case it was the BBC or the Law... no contest. Invited on the application form to declare my qualification to join this august institution I wrote: "At the age of eight I played one of the wives in The Merry Wives of Windsor and one of my contemporaries remarked, 'You have great legs, you should be in show business!'" The BBC must have a sense of humour because I got in.

When you were 15 years old, which newspaper did your family get, and did you read it?

I was brought up in Manchester, home of The Manchester Guardian and, yes, I read it...but my preferred newspaper, believe it or not - along with the rest of the country at the time - was The Daily Express. Favourite features being Rupert Bear the comic strip, William Hickey the gossip columnist and the great Chapman Pincher, defence correspondent extraordinaire, the John Le Carre of the fourth estate, the eyes and ears of the cold war.

And what were your favourite TV and radio programmes?

Tonight, That Was The Week That Was, The Avengers, The Wednesday Play, Bilko, Whicker's World and Huw Wheldon's Monitor, the very first arts programme. Recruits included John Boorman, Jonathan Miller, John Schlesinger, Melvyn Bragg and Ken Russell. On the radio I tried never to miss Round The Horne but presiding gloriously over both TV and radio was that sublime curmudgeon and fantasist Anthony Aloysius St John Hancock, better known as Tony, setting the benchmark in Hancock's Half-Hour for Basil Fawlty in Fawlty Towers and Ricky Gervais in The Office.

Describe your job

Fabulous. I've been lucky to have done so many of the most interesting jobs at the BBC. The Creative Director role now gives me the scope to shape and influence the BBC whilst staying closely in touch with programme making by working on Imagine.

What's the first media you turn to in the mornings?

The Today programme, BBC News Online and Second Life - to keep things in perspective!

Do you consult any media sources during the working day?

My friends, Franc Roddam (creator of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet) over coffee in London, Michael Jackson (former BBC executive and Channel 4 chief executive) on the phone in New York and the usual suspects: MediaGuardian, bbc.co.uk, Broadcast and American Variety and to thicken the plot TMZ.com and kultureflash.net.

What is the best thing about your job?

The people I work with and the people I meet.

And the worst?

It's addictive.

How do you feel you influence the media?

My beard is hugely influential.... Mark Thompson, Greg Dyke, David Gest. Need I say more?

What's the proudest achievement in your working life?

Reinventing BBC Two. Arena on Orson Welles.

And what's your most embarrassing moment?

The live broadcast of Mardi Gras from New Orleans. You don't want to know.

What is your Sunday paper? And do you have a favourite magazine?

All of them. The New Yorker.

Name the one career ambition you want to realise before you retire

Retire?

Who in the media do you most admire and why?

David Attenborough, for the same reasons as everyone else in Britain: his passion, his eloquence, his inclusiveness, his curiosity and his love of the BBC.

'Damon and Jamie's Excellent Adventure' is on BBC 1, 4 July

The CV

1968 Joins BBC as a general trainee with World Service
1973 Becomes producer and director of the BBC documentary series Omnibus. Films include Cracked Actor with David Bowie
1978 Creates the BBC's Arena arts programme, remaining the show's editor until 1985
1985 Becomes BBC's head of music and arts
1988 Appointed controller of BBC2, where he introduced The Late Show, Have I Got News For You, Absolutely Fabulous and Wallace and Gromit's The Wrong Trousers
1993 Appointed controller of BBC1
1998 Promoted to director of television
2003 Presents and writes the landmark documentary on Leonardo Da Vinci, and presents the arts series Imagine on BBC1
2004 Becomes BBC's creative director