Now I must be sure to get this in the proper sequence. Mark Byford, the Deputy Director-General of the BBC, appeared before MPs yesterday to explain what is going on there. They asked him lots of irritating questions, not least about The Queen. At first, I thought this might be the real Queen but, at the BBC, there is now only one Queen and she’s a programme.

The questioning was hostile. It was so bad that there was a chance that Mr Byford might storm out. Or in. It is so hard to tell these days which way people storm. I looked round, just in case Annie Leibovitz was in the room to capture it all.

Mr Byford was not wearing a crown but he did look like he was wearing a wig: the chestnut hair-helmet was just too lustrous. I’m sure it probably wasn’t fake but, like the BBC these days, I must not deceive you. So if it wasn’t a wig, it looked wiggy. Anyway, I wanted him to whip it off and storm out, not least because it would be news and the sketch would have a scoop.

It became clear, however, that Mr Byford is not the excitable type. He’s not a stormer but a stodger. I suspect that’s why he was there. Mark Thompson, the DG, was on a “family holiday”, which is very convenient for him and rotten luck for Mr Byford. As you may remember, Mr Byford also had to appear on Newsnight after the Hutton debacle. He gets all the good jobs.

It was his task to present a picture of utter and abject sorrow over the way in which viewers and listeners have been deceived on six BBC programmes. “I was stunned,” he said. “It wasn’t a ‘Crikey, we have a bit of a problem here’. It was one of those moments. If you’ve been at the BBC as long as I have, you are stunned by it.” To be honest, I hadn’t realised anyone said crikey any more.

Mr Byford said that the BBC must be transparent and open. There is an investigation and an action plan. So far, three people have been asked to “stand back” from their jobs during the inquiry.

Philip Davies, a Tory, wondered if these people were junior. “They are senior rather than junior,” said Mr Byford. “In a context where we are being very open, very clear these things were unacceptable, I would say as well that for the integrity of the process that’s involved, it’s not right that I give any further details about those processes.”

I’m sure you can see how open that answer was. Mr Davies said that it was usually the Government hiding behind such excuses. So what would it take for him or Mark Thompson to resign?

I could just see Mr Byford thinking: “Crikey!” Then he added: “We have an absolutely zero tolerance about this happening in future. If it did, then we would literally not tolerate it.”

Well, demanded Mr Davies, was it a good use of licence-payers’ money to send 16,500 BBC employees on a course on how to be honest? Mr Byford thought so. “The gravity of the situation has been such that every member of staff – including us! – should be on this training programme.”

Then, glory of glories, he walked out! The fact that his time had ended is beside the point. He got up and left. Crikey, if I closed my eyes I could almost say that he stormed because, as you know, almost anything could happen in a blink of an eye.

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