The citation for his bar describes how, during an attack upon a U-boat in the Baltic and under intense fire, he pressed home the attack. The rudder was shot away, wings and fuselage holed and one engine put out of action. He nevertheless nursed the aircraft and crew back home for a successful landing, later to be informed by the ground crew that while he was overhead they could plainly see daylight though the wings and the fuselage. The citation concludes, "This officer showed great skill and great courage and determination throughout this sortie."Following the war, Beaty joined BOAC to operate on its flagship route, the North Atlantic. The remark did, however, neatly encapsulate his subsequent lifelong campaign for his interpretation of fairness.Beaty completed four tours of operations with 206 Squadron, flying Liberators and winning two DFCs.

From there he won an open scholarship to read English at Merton College, Oxford, where he edited The Cherwell with Iris Murdoch. This idyllic existence abruptly ended with the outbreak of the Second World War. Although nothing in his previous life suggested a serious interest in aviation, he volunteered for pilot training with the University Air Squadron and was promptly turned down. When the dons decided to take an interest in selection procedures and Beaty explained that his classical education and lack of any aeronautical knowledge had precluded him, the Master of Balliol bellowed at the RAF representative, "But this is an Oxford man and an Oxford man can do anything!" His subsequent pilot grading of "exceptional" was to prove just how wrong the initial assessment had been.Perhaps it was his Methodist background which, after training, made him opt for Coastal Command rather than its Bomber equivalent, voicing the arguable opinion that he would "much prefer to fight men who were wearing uniform". I want Walking with Dinosaurs for my kids, not just "Yarg, the Robot Avenger".. FEW SUCCESSFUL writers can lay claim to producing a controversial book that ultimately saved thousands of lives. While the reading public followed his succession of novels, David Beaty's work in the field of what was originally known as "pilot error" was little known outside the aviation industry. It was, however, his most important work and the subject to which he was most dedicated.

He was born in the then Ceylon in 1918, the son of a Methodist minister, and was duly despatched to Kingswood, Bath, the Methodist public school. But what does the committee say? That Online may "become stultified" and should be hived off to the BBC's commercial arm! Heads I win, tails you lose.The House of Commons should take the report and ask the committee to try again. Certainly the secretary of state should point out what a flawed document it is. The rest of us should ask ourselves how important is it for us as a nation to have digital TV channels and services that are not wholly and entirely driven by commercial concerns. This week, coincidentally, saw the last edition of LWT's Crosstalk political programme.Let's return to the point about public service in a moment. The contention that the BBC is hopeless at doing new things is undermined, of course, by the extraordinary success of BBC Online.

That, too, it should be recalled, was jeered at by the private sector when it was started: the BBC "had no place" on the Web and would lack any of the sufficient agility or resource The experience blew a huge hole in that argument. There are plenty of excellent shows still made, but none that will not turn a buck. I will take Ms Ward or Mr Keen or Mr Fearn by the hand, lead them down the corridors of Granada or LWT and show them where the public service programmes once were made and are no longer. It thought that there could be very good education and children's channels (for example) run by purely commercial companies, without the need for an extra, electorally unpopular impost on licence payers. At one point in the report the committee states: "Much that is recognised as public service broadcasting is produced not by the BBC, but by other broadcasters."Wrong Not "much" Try "some" Or, even truer, "less". Ms Ward, apparently, thinks that when that day comes we will be happy to be left with only CNN and Sky.In view of the row over the risks taken with News 24, the committee's main conclusion was characteristically eccentric. "The BBC," it argued, "has been a follower rather than a leader in the provision of digital channels.

There are no grounds for accepting that this position will be reversed in future." But the BBC says it wants to take a leading role now, so why can the "position" not "be reversed"? The committee does not say.The real reason, one suspects, is that the committee was somehow ideologically persuaded that such things were better done by the private sector. It is the best example of turning good news into bad that I have seen this year.Second, the BBC, the MPs argued, had wasted money on useless and unwanted services such as News 24. It was agonising to read the attempts of the BBC to persuade Ms Ward in particular that News 24 was a long-term investment for the day when most people would not get their news from a scheduled bulletin at 9pm. Indeed the committee implied that the corporation might be very inefficient.