BBC Radio 4’s World at One programme has been criticised for following a news report on the murder of two-year-old Liam Fee with comedian Ruby Wax discussing Grimm’s gruesome Fairy Tales.
On Tuesday, World at One aired a report on the conviction of the toddler’s mother and her partner for his murder.
The report about the couple, who were also convicted of a catalogue of abuse against two other children, was preceded by a warning that it contained “upsetting details”.
It covered some of the more than 30 injuries to Liam including a fractured arm and broken thigh bone.
Less than four minutes later, following a segment on the show on giant pandas, a pre-recorded interview with Ruby Wax aired.
In the interview part of World at One’s Inheritance Books series, Wax was asked which book was passed down to her by her parents and which she might leave to her children.
Wax talked about being read the German version of Grimm’s Fairy Tales by her parents which she said “couldn’t torture a child more because the stories were all horrendous”.
She went on to detail some of the stories including a woman who “cut her children out of her own stomach because they didn’t wash their hands before dinner” and another where the children had their “fingers snipped off”.
“That’s why I have now landed myself with a big case of mental illness,” she quipped.
One former BBC producer said it was an appalling case of scheduling, particularly given that the Wax interview was pre-recorded.
“It is one of the worst cases of crass scheduling I have ever witnessed,” he said. “What were they thinking? Clearly they weren’t, to run a piece like that next to the news story.”
The BBC has received some complaints about the scheduling incident.
“We carefully consider the content of our programmes and we think listeners of Radio 4’s World At One would recognise the distinction between the reporting of the murder of Liam Fee and, later in the programme, the second in our ongoing series ‘inheritance books’ from Hay Festival, in which Ruby Wax talked about a fictional book from her childhood,” said a spokeswoman for BBC News.
