Top heads roll after Queengate report

The increasingly jittery UK television industry has seen its highest-level casualties yet in the wake of a string of allegations over on-screen fakery in recent months.

Both BBC1 controller Peter Fincham and RDF’s chief creative officer Stephen Lambert resigned today, following an independent inquiry and subsequent report by ex-deputy director general of the BBC Will Wyatt into misleading sequences in a trailer for the documentary A Year With The Queen.

The trailer, prepared for BBC1’s autumn season 2007 launch presentation to the press, suggested the Queen had stormed out of an official photo shoot.

The report criticised both BBC and RDF Media for serious mistakes, although it also concluded that there was no intention on RDF’s part to defame or misrepresent the Queen. Speaking on behalf of the BBC Trust, its chairman Sir Michael Lyons called the actions of both parties “serious errors of judgment” and that the proper controls had not been applied.

“That is why we are determined to take all necessary steps to address the shortcomings set out in this report,” said BBC director-general Mark Thompson, who has announced a tightening in editorial procedures to prevent such incidents happening again.

In a brief statement Fincham said he had resigned from the channel with great regret and sadness, but was “tremendously proud of what I and my team have achieved.” At the time of the incident, Fincham said he had no plans to quit.

Lambert’s own statement clarified that an edit of the documentary trailer that erroneously appeared in the BBC1 launch tape was intended for a few coproduction partners earlier in April, and never to be seen in public. Neither was it intended to suggest that the Queen had stormed out of any situation, he added.

Lambert accepted that these actions, described by Wyatt’s inquiry as “cavalier,” were “the first step in a chain of carelessness and misunderstandings which had very serious consequences,” leading to his resignation today.

Lambert first offered his resignation back in July when the fakery allegations first emerged, and agreed to stay on pending the outcome of the inquiry.

For the full transcript of the Wyatt report click here.