THE BBC attempted to draw the poison from another calamitous week last night by taking the unprecedented step of banning its highest-paid star for three months and accepting the resignation of one of its most senior executives.
The corporation suspended Jonathan Ross for 12 weeks without pay, calling his behaviour "utterly unacceptable", a move that effectively fines him £1.3 million.
Director general Mark Thompson hopes the sanction will end the crisis, but some inside the BBC were lamenting the fact that Radio 2 controller Lesley Douglas was forced to carry the can for a lewd prank phone call by Ross and Russell Brand. Brand quit the BBC on Wednesday.
After a day that followed the script of other recent TV scandals, with camera crews swarming outside Mr Thompson's Oxfordshire home in southern England and 24-hour news channels on standby outside the BBC Trust headquarters in central London, there was a dramatic denouement.
Mr Thompson and Sir Michael Lyons, the BBC Trust's chairman, announced that Ms Douglas had resigned and Ross was suspended from all radio and TV shows until January.
The episode is the latest in a series of controversies to engulf the BBC over the past year, including the scandal over misleadingly edited footage of Queen Elizabeth, divisive internal rows over job cuts and rigged charity phone-ins.
After each, Mr Thompson has promised new controls and to "learn the lessons", but some BBC insiders believe he is running out of road.
The latest scandal was sparked by a Radio 2 show on October 18th in which Ross and Brand left a series of increasingly lewd messages on the answering machine of the actor Andrew Sachs (78) that led to 37,500 complaints to the BBC.
"There are some absolute limits and this programme went over those limits. No one is above the law," said Mr Thompson, who said he had only known about the scandal for the last three days.
This revelation will lead to further questions about how his colleagues dealt with the crisis in his absence.
Mr Thompson, under pressure from inside and outside the BBC, gave the order to suspend Ross and Brand before returning from his holiday in Sicily on Wednesday night, after discussing the scale of the crisis with Sir Michael.
Ross, whose £18 million three-year contract had become a lightning rod for critics of the BBC, was said to have accepted the sanction without complaint.
"I believe that he fully understands the seriousness of what has happened," Mr Thompson said. "I have made very clear to him the central importance of the clause in his contract about not bringing the BBC into disrepute.
"We agree that nothing like this must ever happen again and that tight discipline will be required for the future."
In what may come to be seen as a watershed moment in the BBC's relationship with its top talent, the trust said there should also be additional controls in cases where the production company is owned or managed by the performer.
In recent years, it has become common practice for big name stars such as Ross to agree deals allowing them to make their shows through their own production company.
Others, such as Jeremy Clarkson, have signed complex deals with the BBC's commercial arm to benefit from exploitation of their programmes around the world.
The trust, after reviewing an interim report from management, said it was "dismayed" that the BBC had "fallen way short of the public's overall expectations".
It also ordered Radio 2 to broadcast an on-air apology to listeners. - ( Guardian service)