Channel 4's programming chief - Kevin Lygo - finally stepped into the Celebrity Big Brother controversy today to admit the race row saved the show from being "boring".
4.30pm update: You couldn't make it up: Endemol has had to cancel all the eviction votes cast so far this week after an on-air mistake meant viewers were texting to evict Shilpa when they thought they were voting to save her.
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As the Jade Goody/Shilpa Shetty row brewed, Channel 4's first instinct had been to keep their collective head down. But then chief executive Andy Duncan was forced into the open by the perfect media storm swirling around the Oxford Media Convention. But throughout, the man actually responsible for C4's programmes, Lygo, managed to avoid the limelight.
Today, however, he became part of the channel's fightback via Duncan's favourite PR ploy, Broadcast magazine (where he both stood down and then stood back up for the ITV chief executiveship).
"Let's put this in perspective. This was in danger of being the most boring BB that we'd had in many years and we were thinking "Oh dear, what can we do." And then suddenly from the cooking of a chicken going wrong this argument erupted and then was taken on by the media and then erupted into this extraordinary story. So the context in which this thing arose is quite crucial. Everyone was getting on well, everyone was happy and then this thing took off."
From the interview, it is hard to tell what Lygo thinks should happen to Goody and her cabal:
"If they said racist things at some level, they should be charged or arrested. But when you ask these girls "Are you racist?" they don't think they are. These are young people in a modern age - seeing how they see the world is very revealing and very disturbing."
Lygo and Duncan add that Celebrity Big Brother will probably return, that they "think we made the right decisions all the time" throughout the row, and again that Channel 4 regrets causing offence but do not think they should apologise.
With the complaints to Ofcom now down to just 200 a day (still a high number under ordinary circumstances), and the storm having abated, is this a justified position for Channel 4 to take? Will Ofcom take a similar view when it comes to pronounce on the justification of 40,000+ complaints?
The show threw up a debate that Britain has, for the most part, tried to avoid having. The debate goes on (for instance via this excellent piece by Julian Baggini), and I believe Channel 4 are right to point to this.
But do Lygo's comments reveal a little too clearly that Channel 4 was happy to see the row stoked in return for bigger ratings? And does this matter?
4.30pm update: No chance of this being a boring CBB . As if they hadn't had enough controversy surrounding their Bollywood contestant, Endemol has had to cancel all the eviction votes cast so far this week after an on-air mistake meant viewers were texting to evict Shilpa when they thought they were voting to save her.
I guess they are lucky that this blunder was spotted before the vote finished. How would they have felt if Shilpa had been evicted? I guess she still could be, but I (and Channel 4 surely) hope to God that she won't. Surely Shilpa must go on to win to enable us all to feel a little bit better about the country that we live in and its attitude to multiculturalism.
