John Birt, Baron Birt

John Birt, Baron Birt, 2019

John Birt, Baron Birt (born December 10, 1944 ) is a British journalist , former director general of the BBC and Life Peer .

biography

education

Birt was born in Liverpool to a Catholic father and a Protestant mother and was raised a Catholic. He attended St. Mary's College in Liverpool and St. Catherine's College at the University of Oxford , where he studied engineering .

Television career

Birt was with Granada Television from 1966 to 1971 . He developed the Nice Time magazine . While working as a journalist for World in Action magazine , Birt arranged a meeting between Mick Jagger and leading figures in British society in July 1967 . Jagger, released on drug charges, stepped out of a helicopter onto the lawn to discuss current affairs with them, including the Times editor and the Bishop of Woolwich .

He started his very successful career in commercial television, first with Granada Television and then with London Weekend Television (LTW) . In the mid-1970's he left LWT to the interviews by David Frost with the retired former US president Richard Nixon to produce . He then returned to LTW as program director . Birt then became Deputy Director General of the BBC in 1987 under the then Director General Michael Checkland and remained that way until 1992. As Deputy Director General, Birt was in charge of the BBC news and current affairs programs. He subsequently became one of the most influential editors-in-chief in BBC history.

As Deputy General Director, he carried out a restructuring of the BBC in agreement with the Conservative Party .

Birt's promotion to General Manager in 1992 sparked controversy from the very beginning. It became known that, despite his role as Director General of the BBC, Birt had only been employed on a freelance basis as a consultant to enable him to deduct numerous personal expenses from tax, including his wife's work as a secretary. Such arrangements were considered unacceptable to a director general of the BBC. Birt then became an employee of the BBC under political and public pressure. Birt had to sell his shares in LWT as part of his salary as the BBC's director general. He held the office of general director until 2000.

Adviser to Blair and further career

In 2001, Tony Blair appointed Birt as his personal advisor.

Birt's role in the British government was considered controversial because, as a special advisor, unlike a civil servant, he was not required to answer questions from the House of Commons special committees. There was a political stir in 2002 when it emerged that the government had expressly asked Birt not to appear before the transport committee, even though he was responsible for a long-term transport concept at the time.

In the same year, Birt had proposed a second network of toll highways in a strategy paper to counter the problems of traffic congestion. In December 2005, Birt resigned from his role as personal advisor to Blair for personal reasons to move to the private equity firm Terra Firma as an investment manager .

Birt has been a member of PayPal's supervisory board since February 2004 .

He has been with the Capgemini consultancy since 2006 . He advises the company on advisory services in the public sector and telecommunications, media and entertainment. From 2006 to 2007 he was Chairman of Infinis , the UK's largest independent producer of renewable energy from landfill gas .

Birt has been a Life Peer as Baron Birt , of Liverpool in the County of Merseyside since 2000 . He is a crossbencher in the House of Lords .

family

Birt married in Washington, DC in 1965 , the US-born Jane Lake, whom he met while studying art at Oxford, and they have two children, Eliza and Yahya (previously Jonathan) Birt. In April 2005, he admitted to having a twelve-month affair with Eithne Wallis, a divorced mother with three children. The divorce from his wife cost him only € 1,500 because he had admitted adultery. On December 16, 2006, he married Eithne Wallis.

The wedding took place on December 16, 2006 in Islington . A reception was held at London's St. John's Restaurant in Smithfield after the ceremony . a. Peter Mandelson and Trevor Philips , Chair of the Gender Equality and Human Rights Commission, attended.

Representation in the film

He is played by Matthew Macfadyen in the 2008 film Frost / Nixon .

literature

• John Birt: The Harder Path , Time Warner Books (2002), ISBN 0-316-86019-0
• Georgina Born : Uncertain Vision: Birt, Dyke and the Reinvention of the BBC , Secker & Warburg (2004), ISBN 0-436-20562-9

Web links

• The Rt Hon the Lord Birt Biography at Debretts
• No Birt, no BBC book review of John Birt's The Harder Path in The Observer , October 27, 2002
• Minutes and Order Paper - Minutes of Proceedings Minutes of his admission to the House of Lords