"Treason, your name is Edmonds." Thus began a tongue-in-cheek column that adapted Hamlet's outrage at his mother to snub entertainment host Noel Edmonds.

In protest at the BBC's threatening behavior when recording non-payers, the latter refused to pay the annual broadcasting fee, which accrues exclusively to the broadcaster.

Many, who felt the agency was bloated with 20,000 taxpayer-funded journalists, inclined toward a left-liberal worldview, and unable to deliver basic programs like Test cricket or rugby, hailed Edmonds as a civil disobedience advocate.

"But not me, amigos," declared the author, who stated that he was writing under the impression of intoxicated bliss that had brought him a few days earlier to a performance of Beethoven's ninth symphony at the BBC Promenade Concerts in the Royal Albert Hall.

Which brought him to the point that without the license fee, the broadcaster would not be able to host the world's largest classical music festival.

Against the argument that the Proms should find private sponsors, the columnist argued that the market was a flawed custodian of heritage.

It is the purpose of public service broadcasting to convey this heritage.

Since the BBC cannot demand that all citizens pay for classical music, even those who think Beethoven is a stuffed dog from a Disney film, the institution has to serve the whole nation.

That means chasing the odds and paying for Noel Edmonds' light entertainment.

The author saw this symmetry as the best defense of license fees: Beethoven and Edmonds' Mr Blobby, a BBC-starred, life-size, pot-bellied rag doll that many in the 1990s believed to be a symbol of cultural dumbing down, were inseparable.

Who wrote it?

This 2008 column is worth reviewing because its author, Boris Johnson, now heads a government that not only wants to clip the BBC's wings, but questions its future.

And for the same reasons that the columnist so adamantly denied at the time.

Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries, Johnson's most staunch supporter in the Cabinet, recently revealed she doesn't know if the BBC can survive the next decade in this intensely competitive environment.

In discussing what she calls the outdated license fee, Dorries acts free of the sentimentality that often cloaks this national institution.

The minister leans more towards the view expressed by Johnson's former chief strategist, Dominic Cummings, back in 2004 when he called the BBC a mortal enemy of the Conservative Party.

The white paper just released by Dorries reiterates the intention to reconsider the station's funding model laid down in the 1920s ahead of the 2027 renewal of the broadcasting contract's Royal Charter.

This is justified, for example, by the fact that households are increasingly forgoing a television license and using non-linear providers.

The White Paper states that a continuation of this trend will require a potentially significant increase in license fees,

maintain the BBC at the current level of funding.

Any prospect of that is muted, though, despite the usual smacks at partisanship, groupthink and overdue reform, the paper pledges that the “unique global institution” may thrive.

The white paper, entitled 'Up next', outlines the government's vision for the future of the six public service broadcasters.

The aim is to create a more flexible framework that will equip the sector to meet the challenges of the broadcast landscape, which has been dramatically altered by technological change, changing viewer behavior and competition from the streaming giants.

In this sense, Internet services should in future be subject to the same conditions regulated by the media supervisory authority as public institutions.

In addition, Dorries is aiming for the controversial privatization of Channel 4, arguing that the broadcaster, which depends on advertising revenue, would then be able to mobilize private capital for its own content in order to master the competition with a public service mandate.

As severely as the project has been criticized, the focus is on the discussion about the consequences of the possible abolition of the license fee for the BBC.

In the Times, such a step these days was described as national self-harm.

The author of the quoted column will have to beware of the word: "Treason, your name is Johnson."