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BBC apologises to Queen over footage

Hasan Suroor

LONDON: The BBC was on Friday forced to apologise to the Queen for showing a footage that wrongly suggested that she had stormed out of a photo shoot with American celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz after a disagreement over her dress.

The footage, shown to the media as part of a trailer for a documentary on the Queen to be shown in the autumn, sparked headlines such as “The day the Queen snapped”; “Leibovitz, the Queen and a Royal snap”; and “Leibovitz gets dressing down as Queen refuses to take off her crown”.

The Palace reacted with fury when it emerged that Peter Fincham, Controller of BBC One, had actually briefed the media about the Queen “losing it a bit and walking out in a huff” .

He reportedly described it as “definitely a memorable bit”. The footage suggested that the Queen walked out after rejecting Ms. Leibovitz’s request that she remove her crown for a shot. The Queen is shown saying: “I’m not changing anything. I’ve had enough dressing like this, thank you very much.”

It turned out later that this exchange was filmed before the shoot and rather than storming out she was actually going into the room for filming. What was trailed to the media was raw footage which did not represent the actual sequence to be shown in the documentary “A Year with the Queen”.

The BBC blamed the production company RDF Media which had supplied the footage saying the corporation had “no idea” that it had been edited out of sequence.

The RDF admitted that it was “in error”.

“The BBC would like to apologise to both the Queen and Annie Leibovitz for any upset this may have caused,”said the corporation.

Earlier this week, the BBC was fined £50,000 by the media watchdog Ofcom for faking a phone-in competition.

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