BBC in its happiest place – reporting on and analysing itself

Michael Prescott, a former independent adviser to the BBC, told the Commons culture committee yesterday he had no idea how his memo was leaked to the Daily Telegraph. Photograph: PRU/AFP/Getty Images

This was the BBC in its happiest of happy places. Sure the Beeb likes to do the news, but there is nothing it likes more than reporting on itself. The holy grail of its output. There are whole departments within the Beeb dedicated to making TV and radio programmes about other BBC TV and radio programmes.

There can be no other organisation that subjects itself to quite so much self-analysis. Only a psychotherapist would be able to fully determine whether it is solipsism or self-hatred. Maybe both. So much so that it goes out of its way to recruit people whose sole job is to criticise it.