BBC boss Alan Yentob has said he could not do his high-flying job if he were unable to travel business class.

BBC executives claimed expenses totalling £173,527.04 over a three-month period, according to quarterly figures published by the BBC yesterday.

The single most important thing that happened last week, obviously, was the shock announcement that Jonathan Ross is leaving the BBC. His not-so-imminent departure – we have until the summer to prepare ourselves – was reported exhaustively, getting top billing on Radio 4's PM programme.

As you while away those long afternoons with the family over the festive period with bored, sorry, board games, the chances are you opted for Scrabble rather than a chess tournament. It's almost as intellectually challenging but not quite as daunting, and you can watch 'Star Wars' at the same time. And these days it's just as significant, prominent, momentous. The word game's popularity has exploded, detonated, fulminated, with 150 million sets sold worldwide in 31 languages, and Imagine: Scrabble – A Night on the Tiles (BBC1, Tuesday) showed that it is taken equally as seriously as its rather snobbish relative. After all, no less than the Beeb's doyen of the arts, Alan Yentob, was scrabbling around in his sack, occasionally lost for words.

I shouldn't think the name C P Snow means much to today's generation, but 40-odd years ago he was well known as a novelist – he coined the expression "the corridors of power" – and also a scientist.

The BBC executive Alan Yentob hit out at the corporation's critics and attacked ministers for trying to interfere in its affairs.

"I'm beavering away feverishly on my report; that's my only preoccupation" Lord Carter prepares to step down as Communications Minister after issuing his 'Digital Britain' report tomorrow.

The Brit Insurance Designs of the Year exhibition, which runs from 12 February - 14 June has announced this year's nominations.

A whole different kind of terrible, Bart Freundlich's romantic comedy seems to distil the very essence of unfunniness. It focuses on two New York couples undergoing some heavy weather in their relationships. Julianne Moore is a stage actress married to David Duchovny, an ex-adman-turned-house husband whose need for sex leads him into an affair, while aspiring writer Maggie Gyllenhaal dreams of a big family but can't get layabout boyfriend Billy Crudup to commit.