Just when you thought the premium-rate phone-line scandal could not possibly get any worse, it does. The latest guilty party is Blue Peter, which not only suffered a phone line cock-up, it faked a competition winner. So much for the Blue Peter badge of integrity.
For those of you who have not already read the story on mediatheguardian.com, here it is in a nutshell: Blue Peter runs phone-in competition to raise money for Unicef. The phone lines don't work properly, so a member of staff gets a child visiting the studio to phone the programme with the correct answer. Bingo! They've got a winner.
What kind of a bubble do these programme makers exist in? To paraphrase an old Garfield gag, what is the colour of the sky in their world?
I'm trying, but struggling, to recreate the scene in my head. I should hasten to add that I don't know anymore about the circumstances than the BBC 'fessed up to today.
Picture the scene - "Damn! The phone lines have broken. What shall we do? Tell viewers there has been a technical fault? Nah, I know, let's ask that kid over there to pretend to have rung in from home. No one will ever find out and we'll have raised lots of money for Unicef in the process!"
Except they did find out, but only because a viewer emailed the BBC last Friday to raise concerns about the competition. Had they not, it is fair to assume this scandal would never have been uncovered.
And it is a scandal. Choosing a competition winner while people are still ringing in - the accusation levelled at Channel 4's Richard and Judy which sparked this whole furore - is one thing. Faking a winner, as Blue Peter has done, is quite another.
