Nice to see you . . .

What shocks me to the core about the BBC expenses story is not the sums involved. Nor is it that people earning £250,000 a year still can find time in what we hope are very busy lives to record and reclaim the minutest of expenditure.

No, the real shock comes from charging up presents that they give to their friends and acquaintances. What does poor old Bruce Forsyth now feel about that bottle of Krug Champagne?

There might have been a passing pleasure that a "friend" sent him a £100 gift.

But the basis of a gift is surely to give something of your own. The best gifts come when people make things for you or give you their time.

The gift relationship has more recently been converted into presents. But at least one felt people were giving up income they may have spent on themselves to give to us.

Now poor old Bruce realises that this act of friendship to mark his 80th birthday was really nothing of the kind. Mark Thompson didn't put his hand into his own £647,000 salary, but charged it up to us license fee payers. So, Bruce, it is a very belated Happy 80th Birthday from all of us, and not, as you might have thought, from solely the BBC's Director General.

Date added: Friday 26th June 2009