The question begged by this light memoir is how on earth did the establishment produce such a second rater to head up the most important cultural and news institution in this country? Hopefully, post Nolan, he is the last of the “Tufton-Buftons” to hold such high public office.

On the plus side, the book confirms that, although Dukey was ill-qualified to lead the BBC at such a politically turbulent time, he was an essentially honest, decent man. He believed that the way you ran a public institution was by lunching and dining the great and the good, around the gentlemen’s clubs of Pall Mall. Good Old Dukey, you can almost hear them say. He’s going to sort out all those lefties at the BBC. He clearly did little to disabuse them.

In this book, he reveals little of what he thinks of the BBC other than that it is a jolly good thing. He offers no sense that he understands why the cultural role of the BBC and its news and current affairs brief are central to the life of the nation. He therefore displays what those of us who had to work for him suspected from the beginning – he was under-qualified and overrated. He was simply a placeman, a crony of someone with power in the then Conservative Government.

He had 10 years to make a difference to the BBC. The fact that he failed is implicitly admitted in his book. He clearly believes he did a good job in his decade (why write the book, otherwise?) – but he doesn’t have a good word to say for any of the three directors-general who served under him. They come in for plenty of blame. But blame for what? We who worked there and truly care for the institution can and have told him – he reigned over a dark age in the BBC’s history, a period when the organisation lost its confidence. It became risk-averse, and he allowed his final anointed, John Birt, to carry out a purge of independently minded editorial talent, behind and in front of the cameras, a purge from which it is still recovering. A whole generation of creative experience was obliterated and replaced by a sprawling “Birtocracy”.

Two incidents that mark his reign are recounted by him with his characteristic capacity for missing the point. The first was a craven political decision designed to carry the cheers of clubland, especially the Carlton. His first act on appointment was to insist that the BBC settle “at any price” a libel action brought against an edition of Panorama by Tory MPs Neil Hamilton and Gerald Howarth. This was before the BBC’s counsel had even been allowed to make his opening remarks at the trial. The second was his considered judgement in the book that the BBC should never have transmitted the Martin Bashir Princess Diana interview.

His judgement here is utterly wrong on two accounts. First, it was a genuine 18 carat, old fashioned scoop. The BBC would have been a laughing stock around the world if it had attempted to bury the tapes. This judgement is unforgivable from an old newspaper man like Hussey, who reveals that he learned nothing about editorial judgement while in Fleet Street.

His lack of judgement here was in not firing his Director-General, not for transmitting the programme, but for not warning the Board of Governors about its existence. Presumably Birt kept quiet in order to save his chairman from embarrassment, since Dukey’s wife, Lady Susan, is a senior member of the Royal Household (Lady-in-Waiting to the Queen). Birt clearly had a dilemma – but it could easily have been resolved by taking the deputy chairman into his confidence. That’s what deputies are for. This behaviour by the DG was nothing short of unbecoming – it displayed contempt for the role of the Board of Governors. Where was the military discipline here – a court martial offence at least?

Among the anecdotes (this is a very anecdotal kind of memoir) are plenty of swipes at BBC management excess. These are matched only by his own lovingly recounted descriptions of scrumptious dinners, fine wines, first class travel and hotels, chauffeurs and limousines which he enjoyed as chairman. Some contradiction there, surely?

On the plus side, Dukey comes across the same way he does in life – extrovert, jovial, a man’s man who believes honestly that the world is a simple place where there’s nothing much wrong that a spot of military discipline won’t cure. Lunch with the troops in the canteen was his quoted way of describing how in touch he was with the staff.

I have no doubt he is a brave, brave man. All but fatally wounded in the war, miraculously saved and cared for behind enemy lines, his bravery lies in the pain he has concealed as a result. I never heard him complain, but I am sure he has not had a pain free day since being machine gunned down. He is a man of true grit.

His account of the rest of his life, his war experience excepted, is mildly diverting but unexceptional. If you have a taste for the anachronistic, you will pass a pleasant few pages in his company. Had he not ended up in such an exalted position, through the indefensible grace and favour appointments “process”, we would never have heard of Duke Hussey. Yes, he won a new licence and Charter by the end – never as difficult as BBC types would have you believe. No, the real test is what you achieve in your term office. The sad part of the book is that he had 10 years to inspire the BBC to greater achievements.

The book reminds me that we have every reason to be glad he has left the institution, and even greater reason to cheer that the system that produced him is now in disrepute. We can only hope that the damage inflicted by his bumbling is reparable. He never even learned to spell Alasdair Milne’s name.