BBC takes revenge on Lord Birt of Armani

The BBC has turned on John Birt, its former director general, by broadcasting a documentary portraying him as a power-crazed egotist whose ultimate downfall was caused by his own unbridled ambition.

The programme, to be shown tomorrow, highlights Lord Birt's obsession with incomprehensible management jargon as well as his penchant for Armani suits. Criticism comes from all quarters, including ex-colleagues Michael Grade and John Tusa.

Lord Birt, the director general for eight years until 2000, has since had a series of roles as a "blue-skies thinker" – acting as adviser on both crime and transport – with the Government.

Mr Tusa, a former head of the BBC World Service, condemns Lord Birt's approach to journalism as "almost total rubbish", while Panorama's producer, David Wickham, describes him as "phenomenally arrogant". Grade, who quit the BBC to become chief executive of Channel 4 after a public row with Lord Birt, is marginally kinder. His story, he argues, is the "great tragedy" of a flawed but gifted man with a fatal "lust for power".

The 30-minute film, to be shown on BBC4, is bound to provoke criticism that it is a thinly veiled fan statement for his more affable successor, Greg Dyke, whose supporters are often accused of caricaturing Lord Birt.

Understanding John Birt opens as it means to go on, with the irreverent introduction: "John Birt was the most controversial and certainly the most vilified head of the BBC in its 70-odd years.

"The Birt story is one of ambition, power and intrigue. It's the story of someone who was prepared to go to any lengths to get what he wanted."

Charting Lord Birt's rise from his humble beginnings as the son of a Merseyside tyre salesman to peer of the realm and sometime confidant of Tony Blair, it paints a picture of a socially inept but ruthlessly efficient bureaucrat.

His tenure at the BBC is depicted as an Orwellian nightmare of corporate buzz-words and sudden announcements from blank monitor screens.

Michael Grade, who worked closely with Lord Birt at both London Weekend Television and the BBC, describes how his early promise was thwarted by growing arrogance and ambition.

"The great tragedy of John, for me was that he should have been one of the greatest creative executives British television has ever known," he says. "All of that has got lost and that's a great tragedy. He lost his way somewhere in the pursuit of a career."

Grade, who in his autobiography likened Lord Birt's social skills to those of a "Trappist monk", recalls how Lord Birt's empire-building started at LWT. "The non-Birt people – those of us that weren't called John Birt – used to wake up and ask which new bit of our empire has he snaffled overnight to add to his. It was like Monopoly. He would buy the utilities and buy Regent Street and Bond Street."

Mr Tusa, now managing director of London's Barbican, brands Lord Birt's approach to current affairs as largely "unviewable", adding: "I think his theory of journalism is almost total rubbish. It bears no relationship to the nature of events. It bears no relationship to what gathering news on the ground is like.

"Above all, it has no intellectual curiosity. He wasn't interested in what anybody else had to say – he was interested in his pre-ordained theory."

Wickham concedes that, "John Birt was a very personable chap ... but he had this steely thing about him that brooked no argument, and he was phenomenally arrogant."

A spokeswoman for Lord Birt said he declined to take part in the programme because of the hectic schedule surrounding publication of his memoirs, The Harder Way. However, she said he would "not be surprised" by many of the comments.

Not all contributors to the documentary are so critical. Cilla Black, a friend of John Birt's from his youth, paints an unlikely picture of a colourful character in stark contrast to his grey public image. "He's a great dancer, a great jiver," she says. "God, can he move!"