The Guardian says Lord Burns has, after all, applied to become Chairman:

By Matt Wells, media correspondent
Friday March 12, 2004
The Guardian

A close friend of the former BBC director general Lord Birt is emerging as a strong contender to chair the corporation's board of governors.

Lord Burns, chairman of the Abbey bank and an adviser to the government on the future of the BBC, was reluctant to apply for the job but Lord Birt, now a Downing Street adviser, is understood to have persuaded him.

If he is appointed allegations of cronyism are almost certain to follow: Lords Birt and Burns have been on walking holidays together, and both are close to the prime minister. They are also friendly with Lord Butler, Mr Blair's choice to lead the inquiry into Iraq intelligence failures.

The London Evening Standard reported recently that Lords Birt, Burns and Butler dined together on February 27 at the high table of University College, Oxford, of which Lord Butler is master.

Lord Burns fell out with Gordon Brown, the chancellor, when he was permanent sec retary to the Treasury. But he has found favour with the culture secretary, Tessa Jowell, who appointed him last year as "independent adviser" to the process of reviewing the BBC's royal charter.

He appears to be open-minded about reforming the board of governors, who were criticised in the Hutton report for failing to order an independent investigation of the government's concern about reporter Andrew Gilligan's Iraq dossier story.

At a conference last month, Lord Burns said the large number of government-ordered reviews of BBC operations suggested "a lack of confidence in the system of governance".

It has been reported that Lord Birt has been pressing Lord Burns's case at high levels in private, and setting out his stall in public.

At a conference in Venice at the weekend, reported in the Spectator magazine, Lord Birt, who was the BBC director general from 1992 to 2000, said the BBC "had not been immune" to commercial pressures and had "slipped off the public service rails".

Lord Birt said it was sometimes "ratings obsessed" and should have a "greater purity of purpose", the magazine reported, describing him as Lord Burns's "chief sponsor and supporter on earth".

Lord Birt's comments were interpreted as an attack on the former chairman, Gavyn Davies, and his director general, Greg Dyke, who both resigned after the Hutton report.

Lord Burns has declined all public invitations to rule himself out of the race to succeed Mr Davies. Two days before the closing date for applications on February 22, he was asked by Eddie Mair on Radio 4's PM programme whether he would be interested in the job.

"I think I have enough to do without worrying about that," he said.

In an unbroadcast portion, Mair repeated the question, and Lord Burns said he would not have agreed to the interview if he had known he would be asked about the subject.

When contacted by the Guardian this week, he said "I'm in a meeting", and referred calls to his office.

The Guardian revealed yesterday that the broadcaster David Dimbleby has been told that he is on the shortlist for BBC chairman, which is being drawn up by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

Dimbleby was also initially reluctant to apply, but was persuaded by friends, including the former BBC chairman Sir Christopher Bland.

Michael Grade, a former chief executive of Channel 4, is also said to be in the running, along with a former chief executive of the Independent Television Commission, Patricia Hodgson.

The government wants to appoint a chairman by the middle of next month.