A survey by PR Week magazine has found that the BBC’s gravy train culture, under which it pays offensively high fees to its presenters, its directors, managers and its staff, and the rather gutless way its profligate Trust dealt with the Jonathan Ross affair, has led to a drop in its prestige.

Accordingly nearly 70% of the respondents are more negative about the BBC than they were two years ago and half believed the BBC licence fee should be abolished. The gratuitous bullying and blustering of the BBC’s seriously unimpressive debt-collectors, TV Licensing, has not enhanced its image with its public and led, last year, to them being compared to Nazis.