Is there an irony in the fact the BBC, so earnest in its pursuit this week of names of health staff responsible for another shocking hospital cover-up, has been found to have paid out £28m in licence fee cash to staff to shut them up?

I think so.

That’s the problem with these moral high-ground organs such as the Beeb, they usually have rather large feet of clay.

The fact the BBC has ladled out such a sum on 539 staff, some of whom left after making complaints of sexual harassment or bullying, is bad enough. That any organisation should attempt to silence its staff as they make their exit is appalling. But for a national broadcaster, paid for by the public, whose role is to uncover such actions in public life, it is hypocrisy on a breath-taking scale.

Throw in the whole Savile scandal and a host of other matters crawling out of the BB’s many, many velvet lined closets, and this would be a farce too far if it were one of the broadcaster’s own dramas.

Alas it is not. It is all too real.