Arts Council boss savages BBC's approach to the arts

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Speaking only a day after the BBC reaffirmed its commitment to culture, Sir Christopher said: "As I've said before, the last 10 years have been in anyone's book a golden age for the arts in England - but you wouldn't know that from mainstream television."

He was speaking at a valedictory lecture in London last night and he criticised the BBC for failing to deliver after it and the Arts Council - as the country's largest patrons of the arts - signed an understanding to work together. It had been at the time of the last BBC charter renewal in 2005 but Sir Christopher said: "Since then things have stalled. There have been real difficulties, too many of them, for the arts and the wider cultural sector to establish equitable and successful partnerships with the BBC."

He said he had found it easier to deal with other channels, such as Channel 4.

But he welcomed the BBC's latest promise to give arts more status with a new approach. "This in itself has to be good news," he said.

Sir Christopher also criticised the "over-controlling Whitehall culture" that had operated in government since the Eighties.

"There's a lot of risk aversion, back protection and micro-accountability, which doesn't suit the arts," he said.

He criticised the Arts Council for being "too tentative" about what it did for culture. He said that in the face of constant criticism, it should shout its achievements from the rooftops and he suggested it should be put in charge of running the Cultural Olympiad - the arts programmes during the run-up to the 2012 Games.

However, he added that with the organising committee Locog, the Olympic Delivery Authority and International Olympics Committee there were "too many front doors" for arts bodies to get through and take part.

He said: "Have a single creative intelligence leading the project - and give it to the Arts Council to run." His statement was based on his experience as an adviser for the Millennium Dome which had been a disaster because it had had "no ringmaster". He said: "It would have transformed the situation to have had someone to be the focus of all that creativity."