'None of them paid anything for almost ruining my life.'

The Daily Mail's moving interview with Sir Cliff Richard today is a must-read.

What he endured mustn't be forgotten.

Mail journalist Stephen Wright notes, as his report proceeds, that:

What becomes increasingly evident as our interview proceeds is that he is not just angry and disappointed with the police, he feels even more let down by the BBC.

What Sir Cliff wants is something the BBC is almost invariably very reluctant to offer: “a full, un-caveated, apology from the corporation”.

The old joke that “executive heads will roll” after BBC scandals isn't as funny as it used to be because even executive heads never seem to roll these days, except to roll upwards:

He is deeply unhappy that former BBC director-general Lord Hall emerged unscathed from the debacle and has retired, that director of news Fran Unsworth — who signed off the use of the footage of the police raid on Cliff's home — is soon to retire, and the journalist who covered the raid, Dan Johnson, has seen his career go from strength to strength.

'The BBC were out for the scoop, weren't they?' says Cliff. 'None of them suffered anything, that's what bugs me. They all got on quite well after what they did to me. None of them paid anything for almost ruining my life.'

Such behaviour can rebound on the BBC as a whole though:

Referring to his legal action against the corporation (which saw him win £210,000 in damages), he adds: 'We were prepared to stop everything if they apologised. Halfway through the court case, if they [had] apologised, we would have said, 'OK, thanks'. But they didn't. So I am still frustrated.'

But it only seems to ever rebound financially - at that doesn't hurt the BBC either because BBC because licence fee payers pick up the costs.

The corporation remains pig-headed and largely unaccountable.