Ex-C4 News man is the new Andy Coulson at No10

Craig Oliver was once an output editor on Channel 4 News before rising unstoppably up the ITN ladder and then the BBC one. He was seen showing Andy Coulson round the BBC 2010 Election Night set before last year’s election but that wasn’t their first meeting as they’d been in contact before that about political coverage.

Craig Oliver was being groomed for even greater things at the BBC – he was head of a working group on the future of TV (there are eight other working groups but that’s the one most would have thought the most prestigious).

Friends say being the deputy head of BBC World Service at a time of drastic cuts was proving to be a grim job – telling time-honoured services that they weren’t needed any more. So he’s opted for the quiet life and gone for the job of selling the deepest nationwide public sector cuts since the Second World War instead.

Number 10 had felt for some time that it didn’t have a “feel” for television, and now it has someone who has edited the BBC 6 o’clock and 10 o’clock news bulletins. Craig Oliver understands 24 hour news and what makes a TV story or image. But like everyone else I’ve chatted to this afternoon from ITN and BBC, I have no memory of him showing his political colours.

Though he was VERY political with a small “p” – you don’t climb ladders as fast as he did without being that. He could always locate the centre of real power in an organisation and now he’s found the ultimate source of power. One who’s worked with him and socialised with him describes him as “glacial.”

Newsrooms can throw up technocrats and impressarios, and Craig Oliver is definitely a technocrat. Though you may not think so from this image of him, in leiderhosen, for the “Newsroom’s Got Talent” charity evening 2009.