‘He is the BBC!’ Alan Yentob, the eternally curious creative who made TV no one else could have dreamed up

From extraordinary interviews with Bowie to green-lighting Ab Fab and Have I Got News For You, Yentob changed the course of not just arts programming but television itselfAlan Yentob, former BBC executive and TV presenter, dies aged 78Alan Yentob, who has died aged 78, was one of the very few figures in British TV to have seen his name prominently featured in the closing credits of shows as producer-director, on the opening ones captioned “presented by” and on the oaken doors of offices on the BBC management floor.Cracked Actor, a documentary about David Bowie that Yentob made in 1975 for BBC One’s Omnibus, dealt with complex issues of identity and addiction around a still-emerging star at a time when cultural programming was happier with the classical dead. Yentob’s spell as editor of BBC Two’s Arena, from 1978-85, influentially established that the remit of an arts show could include the Ford Cortina car. Continue reading...

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