There are seismic rumblings at the BBC Television Centre, in the wake of Wayne Rooney's decision to sign a new five year contract with Manchester United.
It seems that senior BBC executives were convinced that Rooney's football career was over, in the light of his sheer greed, his appalling behaviour and his complete lack of respect and loyalty towards his club. Executives were firmly of the belief that no other football club would want to risk employing Rooney, for fear of any future adverse media coverage.
At the same time, the BBC has been under pressure to reduce costs and to cut the salaries of some of its more highly paid presenters. They have accepted that they must now employ less expensive presenters of a lower calibre, as is already done by ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5.
Executives saw Rooney's predicament as an opportunity to meet his need for employment, as well as allowing them to use him to replace some high profile, highly paid, well established presenters. In particular, the BBC was casting a keen eye over its news and current affairs team.
It is understood that negotiations were at an advanced stage, and that BBC executives had proposed a training and development package to upskill Rooney and introduce him to the culture of the organisation.
First off, Rooney was to spend a week co-presenting Newsnight with Jeremy Paxman. Paxman is known to be a fan of Rooney and thinks he has a fine analytical mind, even if he does struggle to string a few coherent words together.
Next, it would have been off to Question Time, where Rooney would have been taught the tricks of the trade by David Dimbleby. Again, Dimbleby is thought to believe that Rooney has the necessary gravitas to be a heavyweight political interviewer.
In time, it was fully expected that Rooney would take over both Newsnight and Question Time, at a fraction of the cost currently incurred by the BBC.
Should these ventures have succeeded, there was even talk of Rooney hosting the Sunday Show (where he would have discussed issues of morality, christian belief, ethics and charity) and Songs of Praise.
BBC Chairman, Sir Marmaduke Pussey, expressed the disappointment felt by the broadcaster, when he said "Rooney has lead us on a merry fucking dance up the garden path. He's nothing but a lying little gobshite of a scouse bastard".
Meanwhile, BBC executives say all is not lost and still believe they can address their problems. They are currently in negotiations with David Beckham, John Terry, Ashley Cole and Paul Gascoigne.
