YENTOB
Alan

• 1. Career

Alan Yentob is a retired British television executive and presenter. He has held senior roles at the BBC including head of music and arts, controller of BBC1 and controller of BBC2. He stepped down as the BBC's creative director in December 2015, and was chairman of the board of trustees of the charity Kids Company from 2003 until its collapse in 2015.

Career

Yentob joined the BBC as a trainee in the BBC World Service in 1968 as its only non-Oxbridge graduate of that year. Nine months later he moved into TV to become an assistant director on arts programmes.

In 1973, he became a producer and director, working on the high-profile documentary series Omnibus, for which, in 1975, he made a film called Cracked Actor about the musician David Bowie. In 1975, he helped initiate another BBC documentary series, Arena, of which he was to remain the editor until 1985. The series still returns for semi-regular editions as of 2014.

He left Arena to become the BBC's head of music and arts, a position he occupied until 1987, when he was promoted to controller of BBC2, one of the youngest channel controllers in the BBC's history. Under Yentob's five-year stewardship BBC2 was revitalised and he introduced many innovations in programming such as The Late Show, Have I Got News for You, Absolutely Fabulous and Wallace and Gromit's The Wrong Trousers.

In 1993 he was promoted to controller of BBC1, responsible for the output of the BBC's premier channel. He remained in the post for three years until 1996, when he was promoted again to become BBC Television's overall director of programmes. This appointment was only a brief one, before a re-organisation of the BBC's executive committee led to the creation of a new post, filled by Yentob, of director of drama, entertainment and children's. This placed Yentob in overall supervision of the BBC's output in these three genres across all media – radio, television and Internet. He occupied this post until June 2004, when new BBC director-general Mark Thompson re-organised the BBC's executive committee and promoted Yentob to the new post of BBC creative director, responsible for overseeing BBC creative output across television, radio and interactive services.

He also began to present BBC programmes. These included a series on the life of Leonardo da Vinci and, from 2003, a new regular arts series, Imagine. One episode of Imagine had Yentob explore the World Wide Web, blogging, user-created content, and even the use of English Wikipedia, exploring people's motives and satisfaction that can be had from sharing information on such a large scale. His own blog, created during the making of the episode, was subsequently deleted and purged. In 2007, Yentob appeared as the 'host' of the satirical Imagine a Mildly Amusing Panel Show, a spoof Imagine... episode focused on the comedy panel game Never Mind the Buzzcocks.

According to The Times, Yentob's reputation was affected when it was revealed that his participation in some of the interviews for Imagine had been faked. Yentob was warned not to do this again, but otherwise not disciplined, much to the disgruntlement of some who had seen more junior staff lose their jobs for lesser misdemeanours.

In 2005, Yentob was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters from De Montfort University, Leicester.

On 17 March 2010, Yentob and Nigella Lawson opened the Jewish Museum London in Camden Town.

In July 2009 he was revealed to have accumulated a pension worth £6.3m, giving an annual retirement income of £216,667 for the rest of his life. This is one of the biggest pensions in the public sector. He earned £200,000 – £249,999 as a BBC contributor and presenter. He was paid a declared salary of £183,000 by the BBC, but additional income from the BBC for presenting and other roles was reputed to earn him an extra £150,000, bringing his BBC income to an estimated £330,000.

He has been on the board of trustees of the Architecture Foundation. He has been involved with several charities, including the posts of chairman and trustee of Kids Company.

Yentob resigned as the BBC's creative director on 3 December 2015 in the wake of allegations that he had sought to influence the BBC's coverage of the Kids Company scandal.