A chauffeur-driven car is one of the more enviable perks on offer to the BBC Trust chairman. But Lord Patten will shun it when he takes up the post in May, preferring to travel by public transport courtesy of his old-age pensioner pass.
The 66-year-old has told friends that he has no intention of being ferried to work by a BBC car and driver because journeys are likely to be slow and the public cost excessive.
Instead, he will go to the BBC Trust’s headquarters by bus or train using the free travel pass for which all Londoners aged 60 and over are eligible.
One friend of the politician said: “Chris has a Freedom Pass, which he is not about to give up. He doesn’t think being collected by a chauffeur makes any sense and he does not intend to start charging licence payers to have a driver at his personal disposal.”
The Tory peer, who lives in Barnes, southwest London, about eight miles from the trust’s offices in Great Portland Street, is often seen hovering at his local railway station just before 9.30am on weekdays, the earliest time that Freedom Pass users are permitted to begin travelling free of charge on overland rail services in the capital. According to friends this has earned him a reputation as a “twirly”, a pensioner who pesters station staff with the question “Am I too early [to use my pass]?”
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Patten’s appointment to the £110,000-a-year, four-day-a-week trust chairmanship was approved last week by MPs who sit on the culture, media and sport select committee. Conservative MP Philip Davies was the only member to vote against him.
At the hearing, Patten confirmed his status as a Tory grandee by admitting that he favoured Melvyn Bragg’s intellectual discussion programme In Our Time on Radio 4 to some of the BBC’s popular output. Asked when he last watched the BBC1 soap opera EastEnders he replied: “Even longer ago than when I last had a McDonald’s.”
Having enjoyed many of the privileges associated with being governor of Hong Kong and a European commissioner, Patten’s willingness to adopt a more modest lifestyle will surprise some.
His choice is also at odds with an observation, sometimes attributed to his old foe Margaret Thatcher, that “any man who finds himself on a bus after the age of 30 can count himself a failure”.
However, Patten, who plans to continue as chancellor of Oxford University, is likely to win praise among licence payers. Figures published by the BBC show it has spent in excess of £100,000 on a car and driver for Sir Michael Lyons during his four-year term, which ends on April 30.