Matthew Norman's Media Diary

Your DG's skint, so give generously

WITH THE row about the Radio 4 theme-tune medley rumbling on, we begin today with a personal plea to the station's controller. Whatever other targets Mark Damazer may have in his sights, he won't be scrapping the Sunday charity appeal - but would he consider widening its scope?

Rather than concentrating on established charities, it might occasionally concern an individual, and I'd like to nominate one. The BBC director general can no longer scrape by on a salary that barely exceeds £500,000. We know this thanks to details of his expenses claims for last year, released under the Freedom of Information Act.

It is a credit to Mr Thompson that, even while so frantic on plans to cut costs, he found time to fill in the forms and recoup a little more than £21,000. In a month, he spent more than £2,500 on entertaining staff, but - just as with Barbara Amiel, who reclaimed a £10 tip to a doorman - it's the tiny details that affect you. Some might get the moists at the £1.75 recouped for a business call from a hotel, but the one that activates my lachrymals is the £8.75 for a motorway service-station meal. Who, learning that this proud man cannot afford his own egg, bacon and fried slice, wouldn't wish to help? Myself, I'd stick another quid on the licence fee, but that might be politically contentious.

Anyone too impatient to wait for the Radio 4 appeal - and I know that many of the 28,000 BBC staff, only 7,000 of whom are likely to be sacked to cut costs, will want to chip in - should send cheques or postal orders to the Mark Thompson Happy Eater Fund, c/o the Media Diary at the usual address.

AS FOR the BBC chairman Michael Grade, he let the side down with a miserable £1,700 in annual exes. Still, there is a silver lining. He did claim £163 for a lunch with Gerald Kaufman, that tireless foe of licence fee-funded extravagance in his then role as chairman of the Commons media select committee. Spending time with Sir Gerald constitutes the sort of good deed known to Judaism as a mitzvah, and we look forward to seeing details of more lunches with the old boy when the claims are next published a year from now.

STILL WITH the Beeb, it seemed fantastically brave of the Newsnight editorial team to allow Christopher Hitchens to speak about his chum George Galloway live and unedited on Wednesday's show, within an hour of George's eviction from the Big Brother house. In the interview, Chris described George as "a pimp to and a prostitute of" Saddam's regime - and this on the day the Telegraph lost its appeal against the £150,000 libel award to the Bethnal Green MP. As I say, amazingly brave.

MENTION OF Celebrity Big Brother brings me to a pair of family announcements. First, hats off to my cousin by marriage Kevin Lygo (whom I have never met) and all at Channel 4 for this BB, possibly the most compelling telly ever. And second, congratulations to my cousin by blood Dominic Cooke (whom I have met) on becoming artistic director of the Royal Court. I trust this item will put an end to murmurs that this column is becoming increasingly self-indulgent.

IN TODAY'S extract from Son of PC Gone Mad!!!, Simon Heffer's memoir about growing up in Southend where his father walked the beat, we find the author sorely embarrassed. "17 February 1978: I'm that cross, I could kick a lettuce. My friend Andrew Roberts arrived today (we call him Colonel because his family run a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet on the sea front at Clacton), and I'd promised to introduce him to my new favourite group, The Jam. I've been right off The Sex Pistols since their disrespectful 'God Save the Queen' last summer (a fascist regime? Not by my standards it isn't); whereas The Jam wear Union Jack T-shirts and love their sovereign.

"Anyway, this morning first thing, Mam said she was going to the shops, and could she get anything? I said would she pick me up the new Jam single. Well, after the Colonel and I had spent an hour fine-tuning our Enoch impersonations, I called down to Mam to bring the record up, but when I took it out of the bag the Colonel started tittering. And no wonder. I said, 'Mam, whatever have you done? This isn't "News of the World" by The Jam. This is Marmalade, and their soi-disant cover version of "Obladi Oblada".' She was very apologetic - she knew it was some kind of breakfast preserve, she said, but when she got to Woolies her memory betrayed her - but, oooh, she can be a right trial on the nerves!"

THANKS FINALLY to Stuart Murphy, formerly controller of BBC3, for calling in response to last week's tripartite enquiry (Who commissioned it? Who cleared the scripts? Who authorised it for transmission?) regarding that channel's comedy show Tittybangbang. I hope some of you have taken my advice to watch it, and decided for yourselves whether it is a mutation from DNA material swept from the cutting-room floor of Little Britain and Catherine Tate, or whether it's worse than that. Alas, whenever I call back on the number Stuart left for his new employer, the independent production company RDF Media, it rings seven times before the unobtainable tone kicks in. Perhaps we'll speak before next week.