BBC forced to cut ‘vile’ Victoria Beckham joke after major complaints
Complaints made against Have I Got News For You have been upheld after the BBC were forced to cut out a joke made at the expense of Victoria Beckham which used a vulgar and ‘particularly offensive word’. A producer on the comedy show has since spoken out, calling the investigation a ‘complete waste of money’.
The BBC made the rare decision to edit the broadcast of a show following complaints due to a joke made by comedian Katherine Ryan, who has since spoken out on Instagram.
Ryan was hosting the panel TV show in November of last year when she made a joke regarding the Beckhams after a sequence which featured an email which was alleged sent by David Beckham which used the c-word.
Ryan said to the panellists: "I don't know that we are allowed to broadcast the c-word, but you did reference Victoria Beckham earlier and we'll allow that.”
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This led to two viewers complaining to the broadcaster’s executive complaints unit (ECU) that the joke was ‘gratuitously offensive’, leading to a month’s long investigation into the incident.
The BBC ultimately edited this joke out and re-uploaded it to BBC iPlayer, with the complaints unit announcing yesterday, 24 September, that they were upholding complaints against the show. Ryan's joke, which referenced a 2013 email from David Beckham about the UK Honour’s Committee’s decision not to give him a knighthood, is currently unavailable in the episode.
The ECU said in a statement that ‘there was no justification for a comment which presented Victoria Beckham as equivalent to a particularly offensive word’, and that whilst BBC guidance do not require programmes to ‘avoid giving offence’ there should be editorial justification. They also added: “It is never our intention to offend our audience.”
The ECU is the final stage for complaints regarding cases surrounding ‘on-air language’.
A producer of Have I Got News For You, Jimmy Mulville, has now though released a statement to Deadline in which he slammed the decision, calling it a ‘waste of money’.
He also claimed that Victoria and Katherine had spoken via Instagram DMs and that the comedian had put the joke in its ‘intended context’ and said that the word had been ‘reclaimed’.
Katherine Ryan has also released a statement on Instagram where she said that she forgets that celebrities are 'not her friends' and joked that the incident happened because she was 'suffering from Matrescence'.
She joked that whilst it was 'a tough one for the feminists' she 'should not have left the house', but added that since the joke had been edited out it now only lived in print media.
She continued: "On the day if you watched it, it was clearly a joke", adding that she said that she 'loves' Victoria after the audience were shocked by it.
Topics: BBC, Victoria Beckham, TV and Film, TV, Celebrity
Michael Slavin