BBC could have run The Times

Imagine a world where the BBC owned and ran The Times and Sunday Times, how different the UK media might have been.

As strange and random as this may sound, it turns out that in the last year of the labour government run by James Callaghan, the energy secretary at the time, Tony Benn, came up with a real winner.

His idea was that the BBC should buy the two heavyweight newspapers to save them from going under and at the same time strengthen the BBC’s finances.

The newspapers were in trouble because of striking workers and were off the shelves for almost a year, with the real possibility of them going under.

This was the winter of discontent and it would not be long before Mrs Thatcher rolled in and changed everything.