BBC caught on the wrong foot

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON, DEC. 16. Much to the delight of its many detractors, the BBC's reputation for (alleged) infallibility suffered some bruises on Friday when it turned out that an old footage it planned to pass off as that of Mrs. Cherie Blair dressed up as a `punk' was so much ado about nothing. It was all wrong. There never was a Cherie Blair in that footage, ``punk'' or otherwise.

Yet the BBC was so sure that it could spot the Prime Minister's wife even on a sepia print that it handed over the footage to Mirror which on Friday splashed it as an `exclusive' with an appropriately saucy text.

``This is Mrs. Blair looking more like Siouxsie Sioux of the Banshees than a future Prime Minister's wife,'' it cooed comparing her to the punk starlet Siouxsie Sioux of the Banshees.

Within minutes Downing Street was on the phone denying that the `punk' in question was Mrs. Blair, and a little later the `real' woman in the footage, a Ms. Julie Fitzgerald, emerged from the shadows to join in the fun. She said it was a dance routine she had done for a charity show when she worked for the Greater London Council in 1985. How come she got to be mistaken for Mrs. Blair astounded her. For, as she told The Guardian, the only similarity she shared with Britain's first lady was that ``We're both female and of a similar age.'' The Mirror of course promptly laid the blame on the doors of Bush House saying it had accepted the pictures in good faith. Clearly, when they came with a certificate from the BBC who could have dared challenge their authenticity. The BBC, with a grace that still marks it out from other outfits in business, apologised for the error explaining that it had picked it up from the Greater London Council archives on the belief of its production team that the `punk' dancer in the footage was Mrs. Blair-to-be.

The footage was to have been a part of BBC's Christmas offering `Before They were Famous' which would show would-be celebrities in embarrassing or unconventional situations.

In the event, it was the BBC which ended up with egg all over its face. What, et tu Brutus?

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : International
Previous : Northern Ireland: Loyalist groups agree to cease
           fire
Next     : Chirac says he is not money-minded