IT IS NOT the sort of image you would find in BT’s annual report — Sir Christopher Bland, City grandee, on his hands and knees, unplugging a telephone cable from its socket. He’d tried taking his phone off the hook, but this triggered the “eee-aw” alarm, so he’s under his desk, grappling with the cord.

Not that Sir Christopher, 66, is afraid to get his hands dirty. A couple of times a year he hangs up his suit, grabs his fishing kit and decamps to his estate near Cape Wrath in northwest Scotland. It is accessible only by boat and has no electricity. Few settings could be more removed from the chairman’s office at BT, with its panoramic view of St Paul’s Cathedral.

Sir Christopher succeeded Sir Iain Vallance as BT chairman in May 2001. He arrived from the “luvvie” world of broadcasting, having chaired the BBC from 1996 to 2001. He was chairman of London Weekend Television (LWT) from 1984 to 1994, controversially netting £12 million from a “golden handcuffs” share option scheme.

He arrived at BT at a low point in its history. Repeated attempts to diversify had left it groaning under debt of nearly £30 billion. The company had lost all sense of direction.

“BT was on the ropes,” Sir Christopher recalls. “We owed the banks, at its peak, thirty thousand million pounds. You want to write that out on a bit of paper. See how far the zeros go to the east.”

BT’s workforce looked on Sir Christopher as the person to dig the company out of the mire. “They wanted a clear sense of direction and they wanted to get out of this mess that BT had got into,” he says. “They wanted a new man at the top.”

Without naming names, he is scathing in condemnation of the former BT management, led by Sir Iain Vallance, chairman, and Sir Peter Bonfield, chief executive. “BT had incurred a lot of debt through making acquisitions financed by cash, rather than paper,” he says. “It was the one single dominant error that BT made.”

He draws a distinction with Sir Christopher Gent’s strategy at Vodafone. “Although Vodafone overpaid for its acquisitions, as BT did, it overpaid in overpriced Vodafone paper,” he says. “BT never issued a share. When the market collapsed, they had debts that were unsustainable. They had lost the art of generating cash.”

BT’s debt has fallen from £30 billion to £8.4 billion, and the company generated £2 billion in cash last year. “It’s a very strong business,” Sir Christopher says. “It’s just taken its eye off some of the essential and simple business disciplines.”

It has been speculated that BT might be split in two, retail and wholesale, as with British Gas. Sir Christopher is adamant that it won’t happen. “There’s eternal speculation,” he says. “Some of our competitors think it would be a good idea because it would throw BT into disarray for a while. But we have no appetite for it here. We don’t believe that it is in the interests of either shareholders or the public. We will resist it strongly.”

BT’s structure, he says, is more like Railtrack than British Gas. “Retail and wholesale are much more intertwined than, say, the British Gas model, so we argue strongly against it. It’s a legitimate question for Ofcom in their strategic review, and they’re looking at it, but I don’t believe it will gain any purchase — except with some of our competitors.”

Sir Christopher has experienced the highs and lows of business. Two years after winning the LWT franchise, the company fell victim to a hostile bid from Granada. The decision on whether to back LWT or Granada rested with Mercury Asset Management, led by the City’s so-called “Ice Maiden”, Carol Galley.

“The LWT share price had performed absolutely outstandingly,” Sir Christopher says, “and what I learnt is the City doesn’t necessarily reward performance. Mercury Asset Management sold us down the river regardless of what we’d done for them and other shareholders.

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