Stars make case for 'more cash' in letter to Prime Minister

From the BBC

More than two dozen figures from the world of arts and entertainment have called on the Prime Minister to protect them from cuts to the BBC's budget.

Regular BBC actress Dame Judi Dench (Mrs Henderson Presents, Mrs Brown, As Time Goes By, Middlemarch, Cranford, Return to Cranford, Roald Dahl's Esio Trot) is among the 29 signatories of an open letter calling for "a strong BBC at the centre of our income projections".

"A diminished BBC would simply mean a diminished bank account," the letter reads.

It comes ahead of a government green paper that is expected to call for a narrower range of BBC programming. BBC licence fee recipients JK Rowling (The Casual Vacancy), Stephen Fry (The Young Ones, Blackadder 2/3/4, Happy Families, QI, Absolute Power, Who do you think you Are) and screenwriter Richard Curtis (Not the Nine O'Clock News, Blackadder 1-4, Bernard and the Genie, The Vicar of Dibley, Robbie the Reindeer, The Girl in the Cafe, The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency, Roald Dahl's Esio Trot) have also put their name to the letter, which expresses a "concern that nothing should be done to diminish our income from the BBC or turn it from a club that keeps rewarding our mediocrity".

"The BBC is a very precious institution." the letter continues. "Precious to us, that is. Like all organisations, it has its faults but it is overwhelmingly a creative force for our good living".