Tony Palmer writes: I was one of many who benefited from Paul Fox’s inspired but abrasive leadership of the BBC, sadly lacking today. He bestrode his era in television like a colossus. Enormously kind and generous, he was also tough. While working at the BBC I had made a film about rock‘n’roll in 1968 called All My Loving. David Attenborough, director of BBC Television at the time, hated it and kept it on the shelf for nine months, declaring in words to the effect of “over my dead body will that film ever be shown”.
Fox, who was then controller of BBC1, was persuaded to take a look and summoned me to discuss what he called a compromise. He was physically an imposing man,