Dyke went on to become a sensation in TV. In a stint as editor-in-chief at the struggling TV-am, he boosted ratings thanks to a hand puppet named Roland Rat. He acquired a reputation for dumbing down but ended up, in 1991, as LWT’s chief executive.
Before Dyke, few TV executives had shown much interest in screening English football. At ITV Sport in the 1980s, he offered some club chairmen £12m a year for TV rights to the entire Football League. “These chairmen had eyes bulging, they couldn’t believe it,” he recalls fondly. Brian Clough, then Nottingham Forest manager, told him: “I wanna shake your hand, Mr Dyke, because you’re the first person that’s given football what it’s due: 12m quid.” Today the Premier League of 20 clubs gets about £1.6bn a year from TV.
