If Alex is right about the BBC’s faux-populist ploy (see post re Fame Academy three entries down), it’s certainly further evidence of its long-running self-vivisection project. In its early days it could rely on the same system as the rest of the Empire for the production of knowledge and judgment (not to mention right-thinking improvisational resourcefulness): the old-boy networking of the Public Schools and Oxbridge, where a chap knew a chap (and anyway management and bureaucrats all had the same cultural compass as the creatives). In the 50s and 60s, this set-up, aware of its own deep problems but still latently self-sure, engineered an uneasy but deliberate collision with red-brick outsiders, of different class and cultural background: result, a Golden (because unsustainable?) Age of inventive television. The widespread popular distrust today of the Expert – it extends way beyond “culture” in the narrow television sense, into politics local and international, medicine, science generally, ethics and (topsyturvily) even religion – isn’t seamlessly reactionary and barbarian, after all : and its emergence as the front-central subject even of the Light Entertainment strands – props to Pop Stars and my lovely Kym Marsh’s spat with Nasty Nigel all those months ago!! – suggests the issue is reaching some kind of public boiling point. Who claims to know, to judge quality correctly? Why should we take this on trust? What happens when we STOP taking it on trust? BLOBBY BLOBBY BLOBBY!! Oh wait…