OFFICIALLY, it is a 'do' to announce the BBC's programming for the new millennium, but the upcoming junket at Hampton Court Palace costing licence-payers more than £50,000 is also being seen as an expensive farewell party for the corporation's departing Director-General, Sir John Birt.

I must subscribe to the latter suspicion since anyone who is curious about the future fodder that the Beeb has in store for us - providing that it is not more repeats - could easily find out from future issues of the Radio Times or any other TV mag.

We are repeatedly told that what we get from the BBC, in return for the mandatory licence-fee tax that lets us watch free television on all the other channels, is among the best TV in the world.

What is not so clearly spelled is how much is not spent on programmes because it goes, instead, on larks like this.

We are told that this Hampton Court binge is an "appropriate part" of the BBC's marketing activities.

But what real competition is the BBC in if it has an income guaranteed by the number of TV owners rather than by the number of its viewers?

If the expense of this Birt bash can be justified in the name of marketing, and when the BBC is not in a real market at all, what are we to make of the benefits to fee-paying viewers of the six-figure lump sum Sir John will receive from licence-payers when he retires next year in addition to his £450,000 annual salary and pension and £40,000 car for his wife?

I can only conclude that ordinary people pay a stiff price for watching awful TV - while its subsidised providers and their partners laugh at the comedy.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.