The trouble is this. Duncan, former marketing director of the BBC, has had the great misfortune of getting what he wanted. For the past year Duncan has tried, sometimes with with the greatest difficulty, to persuade the world that Channel 4 faced the bleakest of futures.
Nobody really believed him. There was more than a whiff of deliberate financial engineering to make sure that Channel 4 profits disappeared just in time to persuade the Government that external help was needed in some form.
Now come the Credit Crunch and the collapse in advertising revenue and Channel 4 has a genuine crisis on its hands. There is a severe danger that the commercial broadcaster has cried wolf one time too many.
This time the matter is likely to be taken out of Channel 4 hands.
Everyone from Ofcom, the communications regulator to the Department of Media, Culture and Sport believes that the BBC should never be allowed to be the sole provider of public service broadcasting in the UK.
Therefore something has to be done to save-guard the future of the home of programmes such as Channel 4 News, Unreported World and Dispatches.
The problem is that solutions that might have been acceptable to Channel 4 such as being handed a slice of the BBC's licence fee income or a straight government subsidy now look unlikely.
And if the Government were to think of handing BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the Corporation, over to Channel 4 the BBC's lawyers would rapidly become very busy.
In turn Channel 4 has rejected outright moves by the BBC to co-operate with other broadcasters such as Channel 4 to produce eventual savings or extra income of up to £120 million a year.
So the last "solution" standing? A merger between Channel 4 and FIVE.
It was never a great idea but now it may be the only practical help on offer.
Unfortunately it was Andy Duncan who killed off the initial concept of the merger soon after becoming chief executive of Channel 4. He may now have to get used to the idea.
Happy Christmas Andy.
ends
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