"It does feel a bit strange that my first major action as director of people was to give myself a four-year pay freeze and suspend my bonus indefinitely,” laughs Lucy Adams. Clearly she didn’t move to the BBC just for the cash.Thanks to the publication last year of Adams’ salary, it’s now a matter of public record that she earns more than the prime minister. Even so, she actually took a pay cut from her previous job at the law firm Eversheds when she joined the BBC in June, arguably at the start of one of the most difficult periods in the broadcaster’s almost 90-year history.

“I have always loved the BBC. I grew up with it,” she says, describing how her father, an actor and writer, and mother, a secretary in the legal department, met while working at the corporation. “To be given an opportunity to be here, for however long, is just an immense honour. Yes, it’s a very difficult period, but there have been lots of difficult periods in the BBC’s life. What matters to me is to work in an environment where I’m intellectually stimulated, where I work with people who challenge and support me, and to do something that really matters.”