But isn’t that another example of putting the cart before the horse – first the cuts and then the creative vision?”Of course, there are always possible reasons for delay and putting off the evil moment,” says Thompson. “My judgement was that we should do everything we could to get the BBC ready for the next Charter by the time the Charter started (2007), and although this has meant a difficult and unstable time at the BBC without any question, I thought it was best to get, in my view, an unavoidable process and plans under way.”It is clear that his experience of “the cold winds of change” in the private sector at Channel 4 has changed how Thompson approaches things. Tougher as a result? “Possibly yes, but also I have a strong sense that the future is arriving pretty quickly now and if things need to happen, they need to happen pretty quickly,” he replies.Some staff members complain that too much of the BBC’s resources are now being diverted away from mainstream programme-making and into areas such as online archives, empowerment websites and music-review charts. The plans to start broadcasting high-definition television, for example, are unlikely to help people losing their jobs in the London newsroom. Thompson is, nevertheless, convinced that he has got things round the right way to make absolutely sure the savings can be achieved before launching new services.”It is difficult for BBC staff to believe in jam tomorrow when what they feel is pain today – that I accept in human terms is difficult,” says Thompson, who presided over a 30 per cent staff cut at Channel 4.

“It is difficult to believe in future investment when what you see in front of you is job losses. It would be a lot easier for me if I had one popular thing after another to say to BBC staff.”The BBC can at least start pointing at some of the jam being spread already. Last week, the BBC said it was investing an extra £61m in improving the quality of its television, radio and online services, with £21m being earmarked for television.The BBC director-general claims he has not encountered personal antagonism as a result of his radical vision, although he admits he has been involved in a number of “feisty conversations about what has been going on”. He is talking in his rather spartan office in the BBC’s Media Village at White City. The only book in sight on his coffee table is Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore, a rather dark novel with a brutal murder and rainstorms of fish falling from the sky.The previous visitor to his glass cubicle was Jane Root, the former controller of BBC2 now working for Discovery Communications in the US. Despite the launch of an unprecedented number of new digital channels, Thompson says the overall head count of the BBC still went down. “As we release money and begin to invest it in new services there may well be some new posts created,” Thompson forecasts.”The object is not to get the maximum number of job losses.

If we can achieve everything we need to achieve with fewer job losses, no one will be happier than me,” he says.The numbers could come down, but this is unlikely to happen before the third year of the cuts, and only if there is a good match between the skills of those losing their jobs then and new services being launched. “We were looking to make sure that the plans went far enough, but also that they didn’t go too far,” Thompson insists. The BBC unions are now trying to get access to the background papers behind the governors’ decision under the Freedom of Information Act, as part of their campaign against enforced cuts.The BBC director-general argues that, over the decades, but particularly in the 1980s and 1990s, the BBC has progressively looked for savings in its existing services to help pay for new services. The BBC’s factual and learning departments, for example, are to lose 424 posts, or 21 per cent, while news is losing 420 posts, or 12 per cent, of staff members, and the Nations and Regions departments of the BBC will have to lose 735 posts.Thompson says he has talked to a lot of people in the private and public sector, and believes that the BBC, like any other organisation, should expect to make “a number of per cent” of productivity savings every year without sacrificing quality.But the Thompson proposals were not initially accepted by the BBC governors, who asked that they should be independently verified.

“They always accepted from the outset the philosophy and the framework of the plan, but they wanted to satisfy themselves that the value for money plans made sense in detail,” says Thompson.PA Consulting was called in, and, according to Thompson, verified that the plans were “sensible and achievable”, and struck roughly the right balance between “ambition and achievability”. “Shouldn’t it be the other way round?”Thompson says: “The BBC, whichever way you cut it, faces very big challenges, but also opportunities, over the next 10 years. The Green Paper [on the future of the Corporation] lays out an agenda for the BBC, which includes building digital Britain, as well as increasing quality and reducing repeats.” He believes that the BBC can play a similar kind of leadership role in the second phase of the digital revolution – taking the country fully digital by 2012 – as it did in the first phase by launching new digital services such as News 24, BBC Three and BBC Four.The BBC he inherited after his appointment on May 21, Thompson explains, was already facing an additional £155m in savings during the next two years under previous agreements with the Government. Indeed, departments had already been told that they were likely to be set targets to save between 5 per cent and 6 per cent during that period.In the past few years, the Corporation’s licence fee has been linked to inflation plus 1.5 per cent a year, and lots of new services launched. “The cuts have come before the vision,” a hard-pressed television executive admits. A 24-hour strike later next month, which could seriously disrupt live programmes, is seen as a distinct possibility. Greg Dyke, the former BBC director-general, weighed into the argument on Friday in a radio interview by speaking of “a climate of fear” at the BBC and adding that if he had still been at the Corporation, he would not be “making 15 per cent of the staff redundant.

I pretended to snap at him [Thompson makes a snapping gesture by way of demonstration]. Unbelievably, I connected with his arm.”You didn’t mean to bite him? “Of course not,” says the man who has spent most of his career working at the BBC; he spent more than two years running Channel 4.Is there any truth in the rumour that he once tried to throttle a video editor who displeased him during his days in BBC News? “No” Thompson replies emphatically None at all? “No. It’s not necessary”.Thompson has explained his plans in detail in staff presentations and made speeches outlining his strategy, but there is still a strong sense of puzzlement among many people at the BBC.The big question that is being asked time and time again is, “Why?” How come the director-general is promising more programmes and higher-quality programmes, while at the same time planning to get rid of more than 2,000 production staff members – the very people who make the programmes? All departments face budgets that are now likely to average around 13.5 per cent during the next three years, rather than the initial target of 15 per cent. The famous biting was a ludicrous joke that went wrong years ago in the newsroom,” he says, in a comment intended to draw a line under a bizarre incident and rumours that have resurfaced at this time of maximum controversy for the BBC director-general.In the face of what some have chose to call biting job cuts, the staff of News 24, the BBC’s continuous television news service, has started working to contract and staff unions at the BBC have begun balloting their members on the possibility of taking industrial action to back up their opposition to the compulsory redundancies. This was in the papers at the time when the famous biting thing happened.” The BBC wrote to the papers last month saying that the “throttling” incident was false and defamatory, and warning them against repeating the untrue allegation.”For what its worth,” adds Thompson spontaneously, “I have never struck a colleague in anger or ever had a complaint made against me, or, even in some more general sense, had a complaint made against me for harassment.