Veteran BBC presenter Alan Yentob has launched a new production company less than six months after being forced to resign as a BBC executive.
According to records lodged with Companies House and seen by Heat Street, Yentob’s new venture is called I Am Curious…Productions.
MORE: BBC Spends £2,000 A Week Buying The Guardian
The firm was incorporated on May 21 and Yentob, who has worked at the BBC for 48 years, is listed as its sole director.
Setting up a new company is an intriguing career move for the man mockingly nicknamed “Lana Botney” by BBC colleagues.
BBC insiders have been quick to point out that the government’s new White Paper setting out changes to the BBC charter proposes doubling the number of non-news programmes made by independent production companies for the BBC, so that they make up 50% of all BBC output.
Might the bearded documentary-maker be looking to cash in?
When Heat Street rang Yentob to ask about his new company, he seemed irritated, saying: “You can’t have any conversation with me, it’s none of your business.”
I Am Curious is the name of a pair of Swedish arthouse films directed by Vilgot Sjoman in the 1960s. They were initially banned in the US because of their sexual content. The Supreme Court overturned the ban in 1971 and the films were the first explicit works to avoid being restricted to porn cinemas. Curiosity among the public probably ensured they became huge box office hits.
Yentob is still under investigation by the Charity Commission for his part in the collapse of Kids’ Company, the scandal-hit charity of which he was chairman of trustees.
It received about £50 million of public funds between 2000 and 2015.
Of particular interest to the Charity Commission is why in 2002 Yentob secretly lobbied the Labour government over an unpaid £700,000 employment tax bill.
The tax was deducted from employees but never passed on to the Inland Revenue.
Emails from the time show Yentob had contact with Treasury ministers including Paul Boateng over the missing funds.
Soon after, £589,000 of the unpaid bill was waived in mysterious circumstances.
MORE: 42 BBC presenters who are paid more than David Cameron
Yentob quit as the £183,000 BBC Creative Director in December to escape possible censure after it emerged the BBC Trust was about to launch an investigation into allegations that he tried to influence BBC news coverage of the Kids’ Company scandal.
He remains on the BBC staff as the £150,000 presenter/editor of arts series Imagine and has a BBC pension pot understood to be worth £4 million.
As he is not an executive, he does not have to declare his BBC expenses but he is still in charge of a seven-figure budget.
Yentob has an unhappy track record when it comes to business ventures.
In 2010 he stepped down after eight years as chairman of the Institute of Contemporary Arts after it was hit by a £750,000 funding crisis.
And until March 2015 he was director of an obscure BBC-backed digital arts project called The Space, described by BBC insiders as Yentob’s “brainchild”.
Latest accounts show that in its first full year of trading – from March 2014 to March 2015 – The Space received £4,399,850 from the BBC and its partner in the project, Arts Council England.
Astonishingly, The Space still managed to lose £148,101.
Of the £4.4m which The Space received, the BBC’s contribution was £2,312,000. The BBC has pledged £8 million in total over the next few years.
Exhibits on display on the website have included an examination of the “cultural context” of the late Radio 1 DJ John Peel’s record collection.
Another work is “Top Goon Reloaded”, described as a series of “irreverent” puppet theatre films from Syrian art collective Masasit Mati.
A third is “Away With The Birds” by artist and composer Tuulikki, which “explores the mimesis of birdsong in Gaelic song”.
BBC spending has sometimes crept into Yentob’s personal life as well.
In December 2014 the Corporation secretly spent £2,400 of licence-fee money paying for 16 of Yentob’s friends to attend a party where he received the 2014 Media Society Award.
This only came to light following a Freedom of Information request.
