But by then the battle lines had been drawn in what the Prime Minister and Alastair Campbell regarded as biased BBC coverage of the Government's handing of the war in Iraq.The lesson that Greg should have learnt back then is that all programme editors should be personally responsible for any errors in reporting, and they should be corrected immediately, not discussed in endless memos and e-mails up and down the corridors of power for weeks, while a long-term position was hammered out and everyone concerned protected their own backs. But as television ratings have soared, his old work-mates John Birt and Peter Mandelson have not lost any opportunities to bend the ear of the Prime Minister with what they see as the journalistic shortcomings of the BBC. He has been a brilliant front man for the organisation, but behind the scenes there still exist plenty of relics of the old-style management, including the board of governors.During his tenure as DG, Greg faced minor criticisms over lack of arts coverage from the relatively compliant board. It was class war at its most unpleasant, something I, too, know only too well, as neither Mr Dyke nor I bother with niceties, and although he hasn't been to Eton, Oxford or Cambridge, he is a highly accomplished journalist and a born leader.What the events of the past few months have shown is that Greg too, for all his popularity, has signally failed to deal with the cumbersome reporting structure within the BBC. On the night Greg's appointment was announced, I saw him having dinner with Melvyn Bragg in The Ivy - he came straight over and said in typical Greg fashion: "What do you think? I bloody showed them, didn't I?"He was referring to the intensely hostile press he had endured, which had implied that if the man responsible for Roland Rat became DG it would be the end of the BBC as we knew it. John could never face these PR exercises, preferring to make his thoughts known through a series of policy statements or "edicts" as the work force referred to them.Greg's appointment as DG marked the start of more transparency within the BBC.

As an editorial supremo, he thrived on staff feedback and was prepared to trim waste and put more money into programmes. But John's ideas seemed to generate more layers of management, not less.He was also, crucially, somewhat lacking in inter-personal skills, and staff morale plummeted. The eccentric chairman, Duke Hussey, would call me up and host a lunch for a group of us in the BBC canteen once a month, listening intently to all the predictable whingeing, and always bringing a governor with him. He was brilliant at predicting and championing the new technology. He rightly promoted 24-hour news channels and bi-media reporting. But John Birt, for many reasons, never got to grips with the stifling bureaucracy that forms the pyramid of power in the huge multi-media organisation that is the BBC. I followed Mr Birt to the BBC in 1988 at his request, and for nine or so years I thrived in the cloistered world of the BBC executive.I sat with Mark Byford, announced yesterday as acting director general, on the committee set up to lobby - successfully - in favour of renewing the Charter.

Every Friday, Mr Birt, Mr Cox and Mr Dyke all played football together in the staff team, much to the annoyance of us ambitious female journalists.My own relationship with them started in 1975 when I joined the company and Mr Dyke was executive producer of many of the programmes I presented there, from late-night satire to more populist early-evening fare. Mandelson was a researcher on the trail-blazing Sunday-lunchtime Weekend World programme, then presented by Peter Jay, and Greg a highly regarded producer on the London Programme, edited by Barry Cox, now a close friend of Mr Blair (and deputy chairman of Channel 4). High-minded talk from the man who once rang me on my mobile phone from a mystery location to explain his own "disappearing" act at the time of the revelations about his mortgage. Meanwhile, Greg Dyke, once Mr Mandelson's fellow journalist at London Weekend Television, has done the decent thing and fallen on his sword. In this unfolding drama, the relationships between the main players go back many years, to John Birt's reign as head of current affairs at London Weekend Television in the 1970s. Is there anything more repellent than the sound of a former commercial television researcher turned politician holding forth on the shortcomings of the BBC? Mr Mandelson said he hoped to see a return to "precision" in BBC journalism and an end of the "tabloid" culture of the Today programme. There was a moment yesterday, as I was listening to the unctuous tones of Peter Mandelson on Radio 4's World at One, when I suddenly went right off my lunch. In its current state, the corporation can't survive many more poundings.j.hari independent.co.uk More from Johann Hari.

• Woe Lord Hutton for you have badly let down the people of this country
• 
• Judgement on Tom must come a lot lot later
• 
• Certainly Birch would never suggest such a thing
• 
• At that point the plan went slightly askew
• 
• Another classic Agassi fightback appeared to be on the cards
• 
• George is a workaholic and I learnt that from him
• 
• 'Call off the Search' is out now on Dramatico
• 
• I first met Mettler at a festival before I saw his film
• 
• He's just perverse enough and his sense of humour is amazing
• 
• For a change such novels even expect the reader to do a little work
•