This column has moaned in the past about the BBC’s propensity for offering free plugs across its network to pop bands eager to shift their new ‘product’. A particularly egregious example involved Coldplay who, at the time of the release of Viva La Vida, performed outside Broadcasting House watched by, among other groovers, the Beeb’s creative director, Alan ‘Botney’ Yentob. Speaking of creativitity, Viva La Vida was the album that introduced us to the novel concept of “Roman cavalry choirs”.

Well, it seems I am not the only one complaining. The Coldplay episode provoked the anger of RadioCentre, which represents the interests of commercial radio stations anxious to maintain their advertising revenue against competition from a publicly funded rival. The organisation objected, too, to the BBC coverage of a new U2 album when the slogan ‘U2=BBC’ was broadcast.

Gary Barlow is the latest act to be enjoying a love-in with the Beeb. As any viewer or listener can hardly fail to have noticed, the Take That star has a new solo album out. He has already featured with it on BBC One’s Breakfast and The One Show, on Radio 2’s Chris Evans breakfast show and Simon Mayo’s Drivetime, and on two Radio 4 programmes.

All this was before yesterday’s promotion of the album which, besides another interview, featured a live performance from the Radio Theatre at Broadcasting House. Coverage was in fact toned down from what had been intended, after The Times carried a story critical of it. RadioCentre’s director Matt Payton said: “We hope that the BBC Trust will be watching closely to ensure that this sort of undue prominence [that given to Coldplay and U2] doesn’t occur again.”

So what say you, Lord Patten, the Trust’s head honcho? Did you tune in? But perhaps his lordship is not a fan of Gary Barlow, wide though a BBC spokesman claims his appeal to be. Or perhaps he was put off by the reviews of the album. Time Out said that it was “like being serenaded by a well-suited mortgage advisor”; the Observer called it “oozy and sticky”.

Talking of things oozy and sticky, I wonder whether the BBC ought to be in the promotion of something else that answers this description. I refer to Kentucky Fried Chicken, as it is no longer called. What, I wonder, do young people think KFC stands for? And who do they suppose is that merry, bearded figure featured in its logo, since Colonel Sanders, of blessed memory, is no longer mentioned by name in the company’s publicity?

I learned from the Daily Telegraph last week that a new series next year on flagship BBC One will follow workers at the fast food chain. According to the channel’s controller, Charlotte Moore, Inside KFC (notice how the title fearlessly names the firm?) will gain “unprecedented access” to the brand.

I bet it will, for a high-profile programme like this cannot be other than hugely beneficial in shifting quantities of KFC’s “finger-lickin’ product”, as The Times hilariously described it in its obituary of Sanders (“He was not a real colonel but an honorary Kentucky colonel”) in 1980. And even if the programme proves critical in some respects, this will not matter, for as another famous American was fond of observing, “All publicity is good publicity”.

I noticed that on the page following the Inside KFC report, the Telegraph printed a news story headlined: “Junk food raises cancer risk for girls.” The story referred to research at Michigan State University highlighting the effect that a high-fat diet might have in the development of breast tumours.

A few pages before was another telling headline: “Fat and healthy? There is no such thing, study of death rates finds.”

This speaks for itself.

It is a pity, I think, that doctors don’t effectively put across the healthy eating message. This is hardly surprising, though, in a politically correct atmosphere in which they are not permitted any longer to call their patients fat.

Well done, then, to the aforementioned Chris Evans who told his Radio 2 listeners last week that he had never eaten a McDonald’s burger and would go to his grave making the same boast. Being naturally suspicious, I did wonder, though, how he could be so sure of his past lack of consumption. A notorious boozer in his younger days, Chris might have once eaten a burger (or been fed one) while on the razz, and then forgotten all about it.

The same, I suppose, could be said for me, who likewise takes pride in never having eaten a McDonald’s burger. But I did once try the company’s Chicken McNuggets, I am afraid, these being the only food available in the early hours as I waited to board a flight from Luton Airport a decade or so ago.

The box would very possibly have tasted better.