Coming soon to a TV screen near you, the sequel to such successful shows as “I Love 1974” and “I Love 1976”, yes, it’s time for “I Love The BBC”.

Reminisce about that funny old institution, the British Broadcasting Corporation. Listen to old people who used to be on TV telling you what they used to watch on the BBC, and remember why those people aren’t on TV any more (and wonder how the hell Kate Thornton ever got on there in the first place).

The whole huroosh of the past week has had enormous media coverage, with ITV crowing (despite the fact that the only significant investigative reporting they do is the occasional celebrity interview), and the BBC doing a painfully self-aware, let’s-report-the-facts-but-occasionally-concentrate-on-the-possibility-that-it-wasn’t-all-the-BBC’s-fault job of it all. Which of course, it wasn’t.

The BBC news is a significant part of what the BBC does, and political reporting is an important part of that. However, the BBC does a whole lot more besides, and the news reporting is respected the world over (yes, even now). So one reporter slightly overstates something at seven minutes past 6 in the morning, and the BBC bosses do what most decent bosses would do, and back their staff when there is room for reasonable doubt. Now there is talk of completely reforming the BBC, and changing their charter when it comes up for review.

Now, there are plenty of things which annoy the hell out of me about the BBC. For starters, they now seem to show more adverts between programmes than ITV do. And they’re all adverts for BBC TV programmes, radio shows, BBCi and associated BBC productions. Take, for example, the almost constant trails on TV and radio for The Alan Clarke Diaries. I’m sure that if you added up the time spent trailling this on various channels, it adds up to longer than the 30 minutes airtime of the actual programme. And it’s on BBC Four, which has an normal audience of less than 100,000 people. I’ve seen estimates that the value of advertising and cost of the programme come to around £3m, so that’s around £30 per viewer for that one show.

I do love the BBC, though. Their output is generally of much higher quality than any of their rivals. ITV is virtually unwatchable unless you want reality shows or game shows. Channel 4 has some good shows (especially Shameless) but the BBC makes a lot of the best programmes on the TV.

I’ve been listening to a lot of BBC Radio 4 and it really is execellent. For many years, I’ve been listening to The Archers and Home Truths and in my youth I spent many a night listening to John Peel on Radio 1. The BBC is a part of the national culture (even world culture, with productions like the World Service), and frankly, it’s been doing a damned good job of it for decades.

Personally, I don’t think it needs to change significantly, and the only people who seem to think that it does are politicians, and I’m sure that’s nothing to do with the BBC generally giving them a hard time (rightly so!).

There’s one thing which a lot of people do agree needs to change though, and that’s the current government. They escaped two major problems this week, one by bullying their own members by making a non-party political issue into one, and another by appointing their own referee. Everyone knows they lie and cheat, and twisting things to get away with it will only work until either their MPs have the courage of their own convictions, or the public decides they’re no better than the last lot and vote Michael Howard in. I hope the former happens before the latter.

Hutton is an establishment figure. It was Hutton who was instrumental in getting General Pinochet out of the country instead of having him tried for his crimes. It was Hutton who ruled that David Shayler, the former MI5 agent, could not argue he was acting in the public interest by revealing secrets.

Not exactly a friend to the liberal then.