When Alan took over as Controller BBC2 in 1987 he wanted a cull of all the factual programmes on his channel including Gardener’s World and Food and Drink.  I had just taken over Pebble Mill produced Top Gear.  He cut the number of programmes, he changed transmission times, he changed transmission days and finally put us up against another factual programme, Tomorrow’s World.  So much for a choice of viewing.

Luckily we saw him off, achieved 6 million viewers, were regularly top of the BARB viewing figures and delivered him Jeremy Clarkson.

The Daily Telegraph Obituary sums him up very well.  After listing his many achievements it says:

“Famously indecisive (some BBC people complained that “getting a decision out of Alan is like trying to juggle with soot”), he operated by instinct and left everything until the last possible moment.

His style and success won him a fair number of enemies. He bore a marked physical resemblance to Salman Rushdie – inevitably, another close friend – but, as Alan Bennett observed in the 1990s, the major difference between the two lookalikes was that “more people want to kill Alan Yentob”.