HOW about this for a cute business model? Someone gives you £3.6 billion each year and all you have to do is work out how to spend it.

Fantasy? Not at all, because that’s how one huge enterprise, the BBC, works.

“But the BBC isn’t a business,” I hear you chorus.

I disagree. Although it has no shareholders, the Beeb is like a business because of the way it behaves.

The only thing that’s unbusinesslike is that it’s gifted a massive wedge of easy money, which it then uses to compete unfairly with commercial broadcasters.

Imagine what ITV bosses would give to have £3.6 billion handed to them every year without having to bother selling a single advert.

If you want evidence of the BBC’s true nature, it can be found in the bloated salaries and severance packages paid to managers and exhorbitant fees handed to overrated stars. “We have to compete for commercial and creative talent,” is the BBC’s excuse.

Yes, I know competition is a fact of commercial life – but it shouldn’t be the obsession of a public broadcaster.

The model for funding the BBC is so flawed it should be outlawed. When the corporation was founded, funding by licence fee was a good idea. There was no such thing as commercial TV or radio in Britain and to launch a broadcaster it was necessary to devise a financial model that would ensure independence, particularly from the state.

But do we need a dedicated public interest broadcaster these days?

I’m not sure, but if we do the BBC should be restricted to that role – delivering news, documentaries, arts programmes and serious drama, with perhaps some experimental comedy thrown in. If the BBC insists on competing with commercial broadcasters, ministers should consider full privatisation along the lines of the utility company sell-offs so the corporation does it openly and fairly.

And if that happens, licence payers should get the shares.