Алан Йентоб: Британдық теледидар өкілінің өмірбаяны

British television executive and presenter

Alan Yentob (born 11 March 1947) is a retired British television executive and presenter. He has held senior roles at the BBC including head of music and arts, controller of BBC1 and controller of BBC2. He stepped down as the BBC's creative director in December 2015, and was chairman of the board of trustees of the charity Kids Company from 2003 until its collapse in 2015.

Alan Yentob was born into an Iraqi Jewish family in Stepney, London. Soon after he was born, his family moved to Manchester where his father was in business with his wife's family, the Khazams. One example of this collaboration were dealings in Haighton Holdings, published 1951, that shows involvement of his mother Flora, father Isaac and uncle Nadji Khazam. Together they were involved in the UK with various other textile manufacturers plus wholesalers such as Spencer, Turner & Boldero and Jeremiah Rotherham & Co. The families also had dealings in South Africa with their holding company Anglo African Investments. The public companies were eventually shed and a few consolidated into Dewhurst Dent, in which Alan Yentob still owns a 10% share. He grew up in Didsbury, a suburb of Manchester, and returned to London with his family when he was 12 to live in a flat on Park Lane. He was a boarder at the independent school King's Ely in Cambridgeshire. He passed his A Levels and studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and spent a year at Grenoble University. He went on to study law at University of Leeds, where he got involved in student drama. He graduated with a lower second class degree (2:2) in 1968.

Yentob joined the BBC as a trainee in the BBC World Service in 1968 as its only non Oxbridge graduate of that year. Nine months later he moved into TV to become an assistant director on arts programmes. This placed Yentob in overall supervision of the BBC's output in these three genres across all media – radio, television and Internet. He occupied this post until June 2004, when new BBC director general Mark Thompson re organised the BBC's executive committee and promoted Yentob to the new post of BBC creative director, responsible for overseeing BBC creative output across television, radio and interactive services. He also began to present BBC programmes. These included a series on the life of Leonardo da Vinci and, from 2003, a new regular arts series, Imagine. One episode of Imagine had Yentob explore the World Wide Web, blogging, user created content, and even the use of English Wikipedia, exploring people's motives and satisfaction that can be had from sharing information on such a large scale. His own blog, created during the making of the episode, was subsequently deleted and purged. In 2007, Yentob appeared as the 'host' of the satirical Imagine a Mildly Amusing Panel Show, a spoof Imagine episode focused on the comedy panel game Never Mind the Buzzcocks. According to The Times, Yentob's reputation was affected when it was revealed that his participation in some of the interviews for Imagine had been faked. Yentob was warned not to do this again, but otherwise not disciplined, much to the disgruntlement of some who had seen more junior staff lose their jobs for lesser misdemeanours. In 2005, Yentob was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters from De Montfort University, Leicester. On 17 March 2010, Yentob and Nigella Lawson opened the Jewish Museum London in Camden Town. In July 2009 he was revealed to have accumulated a pension worth £6.3m, giving an annual retirement income of £216,667 for the rest of his life. This is one of the biggest pensions in the public sector. He earned £200,000 – £249,999 as a BBC contributor and presenter. He was paid a declared salary of £183,000 by the BBC, but additional income from the BBC for presenting and other roles was reputed to earn him an extra £150,000, bringing his BBC income to an estimated £330,000. He has been on the board of trustees of the Architecture Foundation. He has been involved with several charities, including the posts of chairman and trustee of Kids Company. Yentob resigned as the BBC's creative director on 3 December 2015 in the wake of allegations that he had sought to influence the BBC's coverage of the Kids Company scandal.

Yentob is married to Philippa Walker, a television producer. He has two children.