Naturally, things have changed since the days when Dyke, the Tony Blair stooge, could do nothing right at the BBC. Now he has become a useful stick with which to beat the Blair government. But it is still curious.
The answer is, Dyke could do absolutely nothing about it. The book contract with Harper Collins specified the politically respectable pastures of The Observer for the serialisation, and a deal was duly done for the relatively modest sum of 拢90,000.
Unfortunately, someone forgot to specify that the serialisation should run exclusively in The Observer. Publishers being publishers, they saw a chance for a faster buck and squeezed an extra 拢230,000 out of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday for simultaneous publication. Dyke was not amused.
Things got worse when The Sunday Times began running spoilers about Dyke's theories of a governors' conspiracy against him. The Mail began jumping up and down, even though much of the substance of the allegations had already been written elsewhere.
There was also an interesting detail that yet again undermines Murdoch conspiracy theories. The Sunday Times was happy to pursue its sectional interests, even at the risk of damage to News Corp sister company Harper Collins. As a result of the spoiler, the serialisation date had to be brought forward and Dyke's summer holiday interrupted.
Dyke's call for six governors of the BBC to resign may have fallen on deaf ears and the attack on Blair treated like water off a duck's back, but parallel serialisation has seen 拢350,000 of the publisher's advance of 拢500,000 paid off. Dyke may now even see some royalties on Inside Story.
Is this the start of a trend in the economics of book serialisations and other hot properties in the media? In just over a month, we have had The Observer/Mail tie-up on Dyke and Mail/News of the World entente over the exploits of Faria Alam, formerly of the FA.
It would be nice to think newspapers are taking a more sophisticated view and loosening up on damaging rivalries. There are fewer second purchases these days and little readership overlap between The Mail on Sunday and either The Observer or News of the World. For papers that are not direct rivals, it would make sense to forget the ruinous scoop mentality of old and co-operate on occasion to cut costs.
The only problem is that the manoeuvres may merely have been a device to enable publicist Max Clifford - and voracious publishers - to extract more from the newspaper industry than they would have managed otherwise.
We can guess that Clifford wanted to raise at least 拢300,000 for Alam, which at 20%, would have meant a decent 拢60,000 for himself. But that was too much for her story, because as far as we know, she has never slept with David Beckham.
So either the papers, or more probably Clifford, came up with the wheeze of splitting the story, with each paper paying 拢130,000 and Clifford laughing all the way to the bank.
It looked as if a new financial instrument had been born. But some things are too good to be true. Alam's story was too strong for the delicate stomachs of Mail on Sunday readers and the paper had to apologise for publishing such sleaze in a paper of 'family values'.
So unless The Observer develops a taste for kiss-and-tell, the Clifford caper may not be seen again. But welcome to the world of multiple, simultaneous book serialisations.
30 SECONDS ON... DYKE'S MEMOIRS
- Dyke on Blair: 'The charge against Blair is damning. He was either incompetent and took Britain to war on a misunderstanding, or he lied when he told the House of Commons that he didn't know what the 45-minute claim meant. It was he who said Gilligan's reports were a "mountain of untruth". That wasn't the case.'
- In the five years before Dyke joined the BBC he contributed 拢55,000 to the Labour Party and 拢5000 to fund Blair's leadership campaign.
- The original Andrew Gilligan report on Radio 4's Today programme did not include the allegation that Alistair Campbell had 'sexed up' the crucial dossier - it appeared only in Gilligan's article for The Mail on Sunday.
- Dyke on Campbell: 'In many ways Campbell is a political genius, but over seven years he turned Downing Street into a place with overtones of Nixon's White House.'