The Stage

BBC Trust report criticises former Radio 2 head Douglas

Published Friday 21 November 2008 at 17:40 by Matthew Hemley

Former BBC Radio 2 controller Lesley Douglas has been criticised for “serious misjudgment” over the prank calls made to actor Andrew Sachs’ answerphone.

The criticism was made in a report by the BBC Trust into how messages left by Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand on Sachs’ answerphone were broadcast on Brand’s Radio 2 show.

It reveals how the producer of Brand’s Saturday night show, Nic Philps, sought permission to broadcast the messages from the then head of compliance at Radio 2, Dave Barber.

Barber subsequently sent an email to Douglas recommending that the material should be broadcast, which has been described by the trust as “an unacceptable misjudgment”.

However, the trust also found that while Douglas could not have anticipated that he had “made a severe error of judgement”, the words of the email sent to her “should have nonetheless alerted her to the possibility that the material she was being asked to clear contained unacceptable material”.

The trust’s Editorial Standards Committee said: “The committee concluded that the decision to authorise the broadcast with a strong language warning was a serious misjudgment by the controller of Radio 2. The committee believes that referral at the BBC can only work if junior staff can rely on more senior staff to advise them.”

Following the incident, which attracted 42,851 complaints to the BBC, Douglas resigned as controller of the station.