Mr Fincham joined Talkback as managing director in 1986 and in 2000 led the £62m sale of the business to Pearson

Mr Fincham joined Talkback as managing director in 1986, and in 2000 led the £62m sale of the business to Pearson TV.The company now employs 800 staff, produces 850 hours of programming a year and made a turnover of £131m in 2003.. “I grew up watching BBC1 and the first programmes I made as an independent producer were for BBC1, so it’s enormously flattering.” Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones, Mr Fincham’s Cambridge contemporary, started Talkback in 1981 as a radio commercials business in Soho’s Carnaby Street. “He is known as someone who attracts the best talent, supports the best ideas and then backs them with tenacious passion.” The 47-year-old, who has four children, joked: “I once applied for a job as a researcher on The Late, Late Breakfast Show and was turned down, so it’s taken me 20 years to get a job at the BBC ­ but what a job. The BBC’s director of television, Jana Bennett, praised the new appointment: “If there are maybe 10 people who have shaped television over the last decade, Peter is one of them. He also described the comedian Graham Norton, who is tied to the BBC in a golden handcuffs deal, as “a great piece of talent” who would continue to play a central role on BBC1.In a straight job swap, Mr Fincham is replacing Lorraine Heggessey, who announced last month that she was leaving to head his former company, Talkback Thames. We live in a moving world where all schedules move.”He added that he wanted to commission more special projects, such as the week of programmes devoted to Africa in July and an Egypt season in the autumn.Mr Fincham, whose appointment was announced yesterday, defended Strictly Come Dancing against the criticism that the format has been over-exploited.

He vowed support for EastEnders, which has suffered a fall in ratings, but did not rule out moving the soap to another slot. “We’ve got to find the right place on the schedule for EastEnders. My background before I did any other sort of programme was in comedy and that’s something I want to bring a lot of focus to.”Not for a minute am I thinking of taking BBC1 down a road that abandons the mainstream. Am I going to chase ratings? I certainly want to chase success BBC1 needs to be a successful channel,” he said. “It’s terribly important for major channels to have their tent-pole comedy shows.

Mr Fincham praised Little Britain and said he wanted more comedy to come straight to BBC1. The producer responsible for some of television’s most popular shows, including I’m Alan Partridge, Da Ali G Show and Jamie’s Kitchen, promised that BBC1 would remain a mainstream channel,but it needed to show “the full range” of drama, from original one-off pieces such as Stephen Poliakoff’s acclaimed The Lost Prince, made by Talkback Thames, to popular continuing drama. “It’s a bit strange and only a bit mad,” the show’s producer, Kate McAll, said. “But there’s something glorious about hearing these words even if you can’t quite make out every single one.”Abigail Appleton, the station’s head of speech programming, said she believed there may have been interviews in French but did not think there had been a show in Latin before. * What Pliny the Elder thought about the relative intelligence of elephants and humans, listeners to Radio 3 can find out tomorrow night

Maximum est elephans proximumque humanis sensibus. The station will make what is thought to be radio history when it broadcasts an entire programme in the language of ancient Rome. Listeners tuning in at 10.40pm will catch Sean Barret and Mia Soteriou reading from the Pliny’s 37-volume Naturalis Historia, his observations of the animal kingdom.The programme, Between The Ears – Pliny’s Naturalis Historia, was prompted by Mel Gibson’s successful film, The Passion of The Christ, last year, which told the story of Jesus in Aramaic and Latin.The programme features Pliny’s descriptions of the animal kingdom set against a “soundscape” by the composers Adrian Lee, Simon Rogers and Sylvia Hallett.

The species filmed walking on two legs used its limbs like the caterpillar tracks of a tank.. Maximum est elephans proximumque humanis sensibus. The octopus is essentially a water-filled balloon without a skeleton. It moves around and keeps its shape with the help of muscles acting on internal hydrostatic pressure.”This is the first underwater bipedal locomotion I know of, and the first hydrostatic bipedal movement,” she said.Octopuses normally move around by crawling on all eight legs, using their suckers to push and pull them along. The other curled its non-walking legs around its body to make it look like a fallen coconut shell.Both carried out the mimicry while stealthily walking on their other two legs away from danger, said Crissy Huffard, a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley who filmed them off Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.”This bipedal behaviour allows them to get away and remain cryptic,” said Ms Huffard, whose pictures are published today in the journal Science.

“It comes across extremely well.”A lone cloud mars the Chancellor’s horizon: Raith are 20 points adrift at the bottom of the Scottish First Division and have just been relegated.pandora independent.co.uk. They have eight legs and can move by jet propulsion but the octopus has another trick up its many sleeves – it can walk backwards on two legs as part of a cunning escape strategy. Which is perhaps as well: before Christmas, Pandora revealed that Foster, above, had airbrushed Shuttleworth from a “team” photo commemorating the Erotic Gherkin.* PADDY ASHDOWN feels the hand of history on his shoulder. For the first time since leaving office, he won’t be able to campaign for the Liberal Democrats at the general election.In a letter to Liberal Democrat News , Pantsdown says he’s got to be in Bosnia and Herzegovina for the UN.”Due to my current position, I’ve had to remove myself from political activities,” he explains. “This is going to be another interesting set of elections and I wish you all well.”In coded reference to the health problems of his successor, he adds: “I would especially like to wish Charles Kennedy all the very best. “He’s a dyed-in-the-wool Raith Rovers fan, and really knows the club, down to quite nerdy stuff,” I’m told.