BBC Chairman Richard Sharp is to appear before the DCMS Select Committee in early February to answer questions about the Sunday Times report on him and Boris.

Guido reckons that last week the Sunday Times got over excited about a shadowy conspiracy, based around a shady dinner at Chequers, which they reported was held before Richard Sharp was appointed chairman of the BBC. The strong implication of the piece (and it was written with only the implication rather than any proof) was that there must have been a quid pro quo. Unfortunately for them Richard Sharp has now checked his diary – the dinner was in May 2021, after he had been made BBC chairman – months after the appointment process was completed in February 2021. Pogrund is a good reporter, this error is a rare slip up which has set a hare running… into a brick wall.

Sharp confirms he dined with Johnson and Blyth at Chequers. However, he says it was May 21 — after the loan was finalised in Feb 21.

We initially said it was before, after one party confirmed this & the other refused to comment.

Happy to make his post-publication position clear https://t.co/g8jbwBdtyt

— Gabriel Pogrund (@Gabriel_Pogrund) January 24, 2023

Since Sharp is always framed in the media as a Tory supporter, Guido suggests that the Committee ask him if he has made donations to any other political parties (he has), whether he supported any Labour candidates financially, for example if he gave money to Gerard Coyne’s campaign to become the Unite General Secretary. The DCMS Select Committee could be revelatory in unanticipated ways…

The DCMS Committee has announced it’s hauling in Arts Council England chief, Darren Henley to investigate the quango’s funding and “future strategy“, following the Council’s announcement that it plans to cut its London spending by £50 million to reinvest outside the capital. Henley will appear before the Committee in just under two weeks, on 8^th December. A nice early Christmas present…

This is the same Arts Council that likes to spaff taxpayer millions on projects that tell straight white men to “pass the power“, gave more than £215,000 in Covid funding to a solo drag act, and is expected to spend around £1.34 billion in grants in the three years to 2026. If the whole point of this hearing is to pry into the Council’s funding decisions, there are a few obvious questions to ask…

Yesterday Nadine Dorries made a highly-entertaining DCMS select committee performance. During the hearing Dorries took no prisoners, blasting her ‘left-wing’ critics and attacking the BBC. The SNP’s John Nicolson spent a large portion of his allotted time blasting Nadine over the content of her past tweets, and attacking her for using the phrase “leftie snowflake”. Ironic, then, that just 24 hours after the tense exchange, Guido calculates Nicolson has tweeted, liked or retweeted 168 different posts relating to Nadine Dorries. She’s clearly living in his head rent free… 

Some of the tweets liked by Nicolson are arguably themselves verging on the exact abuse Nicolson lambasted Dorries for, including retweeting one post calling her “grotesque” and “thick as two short planks”. Other likes included tweets calling her “disgusting” and a “mendacious, vacuous Tory goon”. Meanwhile he had the gall to claim “Dorries’s record of online abuse is appalling”…

The Commons’ DCMS Committee will get an opportunity to scrutinise the BBC’s top bosses tomorrow, with the promise of tough questioning over their foot-shooting decision to hire Jess Brammar as their new executive news editor. The Committee announced on Friday MPs will be graced with the presence of Tim Davie, Richard Sharpe and Leigh Tavaziva, who will face questioning on the Director-General’s progress on his initial priorities, the licence fee and “senior editorial appointments”. Sources clarify this does mean Brammar specifically…

The Committee may also ask questions of how the news of Robbie Gibb voicing his concern over Brammar’s impending appointment made its way to the media in the first place. The process by which a board member’s concerns became public knowledge should surely be a subject of inquiry…

Readers may remember how Cardiff West MP Kevin Brennan failed to declare financial interests in the DCMS Committee’s streaming inquiry. Guido can reveal that wasn’t the only time he has been cosy with his questioning. Brennan had also been questioning musicians in the DCMS Committee inquiry – one of whom was involved in getting him a coveted Glastonbury ticket. Indie rock band Gomez’s Tom Gray sat on the Board of PRS for Music, which gave Glastonbury tickets to Brennan in 2019, before taking softball questions from him in the streaming inquiry. The cosy questioning session just before Christmas heard exclusively Labour Party and Corbyn backing UK musicians give evidence about how the streaming economy harms them…

• Gomez’s Tom Gray moaned that the Tories ‘have always been racists’, promoted electoral fraud conspiracies, and called the Prime Minister a ‘bowl of sh*t’.
• Elbow’s Guy Garvey hosts a regular BBC radio show while saying Brexit is ‘a f*cking disaster’, calling the Prime Minister a ‘f*cking evil bastard’ and bragging about voting Labour in 2017 and 2019.
• Singer Nadine Shah signed an open letter to the Guardian calling for people to vote for Jeremy Corbyn who she’s called ‘one of the most decent people I’ve ever met’. She also performed at Stop the War events, and was pictured cozying up to Labour MPs including the DCMS Committee’s Kevin Brennan.
• Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien – worth an estimated $25 million – led Glastonbury crowds in chanting ‘oh Jeremy Corbyn’.

Nominally left-wing, multi-millionaire musicians want music lovers to pay them higher royalty rates for streaming their music, much higher than they get from radio broadcasters. Brennan will be annoyed that despite sucking up to the millionaire musicians, this year he won’t get another Glasto ticket – it’s just been cancelled for the second year in a row…