HOWZAT

When Eric Morecambe mentioned at a BBC Christmas party that he and Ernie Wise had received a generous offer from Thames Television, Cotton assured him that the BBC would match it and they shook hands. Cotton was in America recovering from the flu when he heard that Eric and Ernie had signed for Thames after all, and he felt badly let down. He regarded their Thames shows as a squandering of talent, but took no pleasure from this.

As the head of BBC1 Cotton proved to be an astute scheduler, ensuring that programmes “inherited” an audience captured by those going before. This Cotton effect was particularly significant on Saturdays when weekend audience figures were regarded as being of the greatest importance in the ratings war with ITV. Later in his career, however, Cotton was to discount high audience ratings as the immutable gauge of a television station’s success. Once, when the BBC and ITV were locked in combat over audiences for the new breakfast programming, he brought an acrimonious corporation meeting to a sudden halt by shouting: “remember the battleship Potemkin!”

When his executives responded with uncomprehending stares, Cotton explained: “They put too much faith in the ratings.” During the pacifying laughter that ensued, Cotton gathered his papers and left them to it. It was often by such devices that he managed to retain the loyalty and affection of programme heads.

The lowest point of his 30-year BBC career came in 1982 when he was passed over for the job on which he had set his heart — managing directorship of BBC Television. He always maintained that he had been promised the post by the new Director-General, Alasdair Milne, but that Milne had been overruled by the BBC Chairman, George Howard, who preferred Aubrey Singer.

Cotton made no secret of his displeasure when he was given what he regarded as a “non-job” in charge of plans for a BBC satellite service. Banished from his beloved Television Centre, he fretted in some luxury in a separate building until early in 1984, when the tide of BBC politics turned in his favour. At last he found himself in the managing director’s chair.

From the start, he was determined to recruit to the BBC the man he admired most in television, Michael Grade, then working in America. Although the two were lifelong friends, negotiations proved long and difficult. When Grade was safely on the staff as Controller of BBC1, Cotton declared that if he had never done anything else for the corporation, that one appointment would have justified his existence. He was dismayed when Grade left after only a few years to take over Channel Four.

Cotton stepped down in 1988 on reaching the BBC’s customary retiring age of 60. Will Wyatt, an executive who worked under him, called Cotton “the last of the old era”, a man who loved the BBC, was sentimental about it and let it show. “He had a rare sense of the public mood and was able to communicate this to those around him,” said Wyatt. “He was combative, reassuring and streetwise in times of crisis, and alert to the dangers of overconfidence when things were going well — all in all, a fund of common sense.”

Cotton was held in great affection both within the BBC and outside. When he arrived at any gathering of showbusiness people, such as the press launch of a new variety programme, he would often be greeted with applause — an accolade ordinarily reserved for star performers and not accorded to BBC mandarins. This was partly because of the association with his father, but also because he was something of a performer in his own right as wit and raconteur.

He was certainly as superstitious as any theatrical. Nothing would persuade him to wear green or to get into a green car, even a limousine of that hue provided by solicitous hosts in a foreign country. Unknown to most of his associates, on the other hand, he was also deeply religious, though not a regular churchgoer. He was able to quote entire hymns from Ancient and Modern and he did so whenever he thought it appropriate.

A verse by George Herbert that he considered especially suitable for television people, and which he would declaim without preamble or subsequent interpretation, was: “A man that looks on glass/ On it may stay his eye/ Or if he pleaseth, through it pass/ And then the Heav’n espy.”

He had a long association with BBC Enterprises, the corporation’s commercial arm, of which he was chairman for a time, and also with the Royal Television Society, of which he was a Fellow and a president. After his retirement from the BBC he became chairman of Noel Gay Television and of the ITV company, Meridian. For a decade he acted as agent for the broadcaster Sue Lawley. He was appointed OBE in 1976 and CBE in 1989 and was knighted in 2001.

He had three daughters by his first marriage to Bernadine (known as Boo) Sinclair, who died of breast cancer in 1964. His second marriage, to Ann Henderson, was dissolved and he married Kathryn Burgess in 1990.

Sir Bill Cotton, CBE, television executive, was born on April 23, 1928. He died on August 11, 2008, aged 80