Lightning strikes twice 

15 October 2009 tbs.pm/1108

Broadcast Now: Andrew Jackson at centre of BBC row – before he even starts

Perhaps the most bizarre yet of a series of incidents that have affected the BBC in some form over the last few years, it concerns the appointment of the ex-managing director of Tigress Productions as the head of the BBC’s Natural History Unit and a certain Florence Jackson winning a Blue Peter competition to design a medal for the 2012 Olympics.

Problem is, competition winner Florence Jackson is the nine year-old daughter of Andrew Jackson, namely the very same Andrew Jackson who is currently on “gardening leave” prior to taking up his position at the BBC (the Natural History Unit, if you were still wondering).

So it seems that this particular Jackson family are extremely talented in more ways than one, even though the odds of Florence winning that competition independently of her father’s BBC appointment probably exceed 1,000 to 1. (There may have been more than 17,000 entries but many of them were probably rubbish anyway.)

Given the undisputed fact that Florence entered the competition before her father was even considered for the BBC position, it’s unlikely that any rule(s) have been broken unless there’s an obscure clause relating to the potential disqualification of a winner at the time of the results announcement.

Anyway, surely the best solution is to just take another look at Florence’s winning entry. If it looks to be a legitimate competition entry of a high standard, ie. doesn’t look as if it was conceived by a two year-old or drawn by a professional adult graphic designer, then it deserved to win, pure and simple.

Though of course newspapers like the Daily Mail don’t believe in coincidences when their BBC-bashing happens to sell newspapers to their daily faithful.