Chris Patten is going to be the next chairman of the BBC – and like all good politicians, appeared agreeably unqualified for the task as he rhetorically sashayed before MPs.

Labour rottweiler Tom Watson cut straight to the point, asking: "When did you last watch EastEnders?"

It is, of course, the job of the BBC Trust to act as a champion of the BBC's viewers and listeners, and at least Patten's answer will have cheered the health food lobby: "When I last watched the programme, it was even longer ago than when I last had McDonald's." They serve better in Ian Beale's caff no doubt, but Patten is a man with a lot to learn, going on to say that a definition of a celebrity was "somebody I'd never heard of". It turned out that he begins the day, as all politicians no doubt do, listening to Today on Radio 4. Somebody rashly asked if he listened to the recently reprieved 6 Music – no – or even Radio 1, which he only caught, he said, when turning the dial between Radios 3 and 4.

Students of FM frequencies, though, will note this has to be wrong as there is no Fearne Cotton stop-off on the route between Radio 3 (90.2FM to 92.4FM) and Radio 4, which sits between 92.4 and 94.6FM. Radio 1 is at somewhere around 98FM, as Patten will soon discover. As he said, he expected the BBC job "to extend my cultural horizons".

Yet at least he was candid. "I watch the programmes that you'd expect somebody of my background to. That's who I am: I'm 66, white and well educated" – which means he binges on news and current affairs. But already he is trying hard to improve. The night before the hearing, Patten sat down in front of the box to watch Mud Sweat and Tractors: the Story of Agriculture on BBC4.

That led Labour wit David Cairns to get straight to the point: "I sense your idea of dumbing down is watching BBC2." Who knows if television viewing came up in Patten's successful interview with Hunt. But the veteran Europhile Tory did his best to make it clear he would be politically independent, promising to give up the party whip in the Lords and quit as president of Richmond Park Conservative Association. But unlike the last three chairmen, all of whom quit their political parties, Patten said he couldn't quite bear to tear up his membership card.

The culture, media and sport select committee, although expected to give their blessing to Patten's appointment, are more worried about his outside interests, the most toxic of which is his role as a member of the international advisory panel at BP. Yet in truth, none of this matters. His job is not to make programmes but to protect the BBC from its critics and stand up for the corporation's Reithian mission. And when it came to that, he knew exactly what to say: "I think the BBC should be biased in favour of tolerant, civilised pluralism." Let us hope he can live up to that.

• This article was amended on 14 March 2011. The original headline and text reporting on the evidence of Chris Patten, who has been nominated as the next chairman of the BBC, to the Department of Culture, Media and Sport select committee, incorrectly quoted him as saying that he "hardly ever watches television". In fact Lord Patten said: "I take slight exception to the argument that I hardly watch television, it is true you don't find me in front of Eastenders." This has been corrected.