Hall takes charge of battered BBC

Lord Hall, who started out as a BBC trainee 40 years ago, will spend part of his first day in the office speaking to staff at the corporation, which has been beset with problems since the Jimmy Savile sex abuse scandal came to light.

In addition, the former BBC news executive also has low staff morale to contend with, a fact highlighted by last week’s strike in a row over jobs, workload and claims of bullying.

When previous director general George Entwistle stepped down in November after a Tory peer was mistakenly implicated in child abuse claims on BBC2’s Newsnight, Lord Hall was the only candidate contacted by the BBC Trust.

Before being offered the £450,000-a-year post, Lord Hall had been chief executive of the Royal Opera House, a job he took up in 2001.

Birkenhead-born Lord Hall, who was made a cross-bench peer in 2010, admitted there is “a lot of hard work ahead” when announcing his first appointments earlier this year, but said he was creating a team that would “define the BBC and public service broadcasting for the next decade”.