Dyke's deputy heads for Channel 4

Channel 4 is expected to offer Mark Thompson the chief executive's job after its board met to decide Michael Jackson's successor.

If Mr Thompson, 44, the BBC's director of television, does make the move to Horseferry Road, it will be only the second place he has worked.

Mr Thompson is the man who killed One Man And His Dog but created The Naked Chef. Effectively Greg Dyke's number two, he has been a corporation man since he joined from Oxford in 1979.

He has moved effortlessly up the hierarchy, helped as much by his political skills as by the creative vision that backed The Royle Family. He is, say colleagues, extremely bright and selfeffacing enough to succeed in BBC office politics. He is a staunch defender of public-service broadcasting, but believes the BBC must change radically to survive.

? Former Conservative Chief Whip Lord Ryder of Wensum is to be named vice chairman of the BBC, it emerged today, in a bid to end the row over political "bias" at the top of the corporation.