If the latest issue of Private Eye is to be believed (difficult for many fans, I know), the managers of our beloved Corporation are playing silly buggers again. In other words, at the first sign of pressure, panic.

As the sound of stable doors slamming shut resounds around the BBC, the Jimmy Savile scandal is having some increasingly bizarre after-effects.

A one-off docudrama about the creation of Doctor Who scripted by Mark Gatiss is in production, to be broadcast in November 2013 in celebration of the programme’s 50^th anniversary. Its makers have just been ordered to excise all scenes set in Television Centre dressing rooms.

It’s one of those stories which ought to sound too silly to be true but, knowing the managerial “human centipede” running the BBC, it’s all too believable.