[2] Greg Dyke was born in 1947, in Hayes, Middlesex, the youngest of three sons in a "stable, lower middle class"[3] family.

[8] He left the Mirror after attempting to stage a union-backed protest against poor pay conditions by the junior staff on the paper.

[9] His contemporaries and friends at York included future journalists Linda Grant and Peter Hitchens, the latter then active in the International Socialists.

[11] After the success of The Six O' Clock Show, Dyke was brought in by Jonathan Aitken to become programme director at ailing station TV-am in April 1983.

He was instrumental in reviving the breakfast show's fortunes by introducing a new schedule based around popular features including bingo, celebrity gossip and horoscopes.

Dyke left TV-am, in May 1984 after Bruce Gyngell was brought in to enhance and improve the company to allow it to be financially viable.

In February 1993 he was appointed chairman of the GMTV board and tasked with overhauling the station format, which included "more popular journalism".

His first acquisition was Grundy Television[22][23] which helped build Pearson into the biggest non-US independent production company in the world.

The "crap" he referred to was the complex internal market Birt had introduced at the BBC which, it was argued, turned employees away from making programmes and into managers.

Unusually for a recent director-general, he had a good rapport with his employees and was popular with the majority of BBC staff, his management style being seen as more open and risk-taking than Birt's.

In 2002, he introduced the Freeview terrestrial digital transmission platform with six additional BBC channels, and persuaded Sky TV to join the consortium.

In September 2004, Dyke received an award for his remarks from Glasgow-based organisation Empower Scotland, which fights against workplace racism.

[31] Dyke attracted criticism when he "forgot" to sell an equity stake in Granada Television, which presented a conflict of interest in his new position.

An ITV executive was quoted as saying, "By being too radical and playing fast and loose with the public service remit, the BBC is inviting external regulation – and it deserves it.

[33] Dyke resigned from the BBC on 29 January 2004 along with Gavyn Davies and Andrew Gilligan, after the publication of the Hutton Report into the circumstances surrounding the death of David Kelly.

"[35] Groups of staff staged walk outs from Broadcasting House and other BBC offices in Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle, Glasgow, Cardiff and Derry, in protest at Dyke's resignation.

[36] In addition, on 31 January 2004, BBC staff paid for a full-page advert in The Daily Telegraph to express their "dismay" over Dyke's departure.

The statement in the advertisement read: Greg Dyke stood for brave, independent and rigorous BBC journalism that was fearless in its search for the truth.

[35][38]Speaking on GMTV on 30 January, Dyke himself questioned the conclusions of the report, saying "We were shocked it was so black and white [...] We knew mistakes had been made but we didn't believe they were only by us."

The book, Inside Story, subsequently published in September 2004, goes into detail about Dyke's opinion on the relationship between the BBC and the British government, and of the Dr. David Kelly affair and Hutton Inquiry.

[citation needed] He was appointed chair of the British Film Institute on 15 February 2008, succeeding Anthony Minghella.

Manager Bill Dodgin Sr. tried to sign his brother, but their father would not agree to him committing to what he saw as a badly paid and insecure career.

[43] From 1997 to 1999, Dyke served as a non-executive director of Manchester United, and was the sole board member to oppose a takeover bid from BSkyB, which was subsequently rejected by the Monopolies and Mergers Commission.

[44] When he became director-general of the BBC he admitted a "potential conflict of interest" between his new post and his non-executive directorship at Manchester United plc.

In a speech at the Manchester Evening News Business of the Year Awards, he said "it was seen as a conflict of interest to both buy and sell football rights.

[48] At Brentford, Dyke's focus was on budget constraints for the small club and the necessity to generate money from televised matches and other means.

These initial slight successes preceded a spell of misfortune which saw Brentford lose 16 matches in a row and be relegated to Football League Two in 2007.

Turnover of managers was fast, with Allen, Leroy Rosenior,[51] Scott Fitzgerald, Alan Reeves, Barry Quin[52] and Terry Butcher[53] in the space of two years, before Butcher's assistant Andy Scott got the team back on track, winning the League Two title on 25 April 2009.

Dyke appeared on BBC Two's Newsnight programme on 8 July 2011 alongside comedian Steve Coogan, where he confronted former News of the World deputy features editor Paul McMullen over his attitude to the events of the phone hacking scandal.

Until 1999, he was considered "very much part of Tony Blair's New England", attending parties to celebrate Labour's 1997 election victory.