Samir Shah offered a long thought about Northern Ireland while Tim Davie repeated terms so broad as to be meaningless

Caroline Dinenage, the chair of the culture, media and sport committee, regretted at its opening meeting with the BBC chiefs Tim Davie (director general) and Samir Shah (chair) that their catch-up would be detained by a recent scandal. She indicated in her tone that the fault, if not theirs, definitely wasn’t hers, and she meant the documentary recently pulled from iPlayer, Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone.

Although the tone was pretty punchy throughout, they observed the fundamental courtesy of the committee, that you do all the boring stuff before you get to the interesting bit. So this account will not be chronological.