See For Yourself.



TV Find above the first ten minutes of "See For Yourself", a 1989 programme in which the BBC went behind the scenes on itself, an end of year report on its achievements and failures. Sadly it is only the first ten minutes because as the YouTube uploader notes: "it was right at the end of a tape." Nevertheless there are some amazing scenes, like the producer on 1988's Children in Need losing his rag because Joanna Lumley's microphone's broken and the tour de force of presenter Sue Lawley walking through sets and past props from the successes of the two main channels (though there is notably one line which will make you die a little inside).

Imagine if the BBC put on a show like this now. To an extent it doesn't have to. With the website, twitter and everything else its successes can be championed in real time, its failures gaping like open wounds for the tabloids to poke their biros into. But suppose, just suppose, a version of this programme presented by Sophie Raworth at the end of last year, with behind the scenes material on the Olympics, a walk through the production centre in Cardiff and management strawpeople turning up to be shouted at by the public for the Jubilee coverage or Saville, but with a general tone that says "We're brilliant aren't we? Eh? Yeah." Either that or broadcast Mitch in prime time. That would do too.

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