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Is BBC's Martin Davidson honest? Make no bones about it Is BBC's Martin Davidson honest? Make no bones about it
(35 minutes later)
A bunch of bananas to BBC history and business commissioning editor Martin Davidson's disarming honesty. At a BBC2 dinner in London on Tuesday night to unveil the channel's new history programmes a lot of the talk was about Channel 4's documentary about the discovery of the skeleton of Richard III, which drew 3.7 million viewers the previous evening. Martin kicked off his speech to hacks about "giving history back to the storytellers" by saying he felt he had to unburden himself of something. "I was the one who turned down the Richard III car park programme," he admitted. D'oh! Presenter Dan Snow applauded him for his honesty. Even when Martin went on to add that he may have missed a trick when he once saw a Japanese business programme, not thinking that it would later go on to become the hit show that is Dragons' Den. Still at least the BBC got Dragons' Den in the end. At this point it would be traditional for Monkey to compare Davidson to the Decca Records man who famously "turned down the Beatles". But that would obviously be unfair. A bunch of bananas to BBC history and business commissioning editor Martin Davidson for his disarming honesty. At a BBC2 dinner in London on Tuesday night to unveil the channel's new history programmes a lot of the talk was about Channel 4's documentary about the discovery of the skeleton of Richard III, which drew 3.7 million viewers the previous evening. Martin kicked off his speech to hacks about "giving history back to the storytellers" by saying he felt he had to unburden himself of something. "I was the one who turned down the Richard III car park programme," he admitted. D'oh! Presenter Dan Snow applauded him for his honesty. Even when Martin went on to add that he may have missed a trick when he once saw a Japanese business programme, not thinking that it would later go on to become the hit show that is Dragons' Den. Still at least the BBC got Dragons' Den in the end. At this point it would be traditional for Monkey to compare Davidson to the Decca Records man who famously "turned down the Beatles". But that would obviously be unfair.