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Media
BBC apologises for editing King out of TOTP repeats
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 20 October 2011
Former record industry executive and sometime pop star Jonathan King, who, of course, was convicted in 2001 of sexual assault on five teenage boys in the 1980s, has received an apology from the BBC after it cut one of his performances out of a repeat of ‘Top Of The Pops’. BBC Four aired a 1976 edition of the legendary pop show, but removed King’s performance of his version of ‘It Only Takes A Minute’, seemingly because producers feared viewers might be offended given the singer’s subsequent crimes. But BBC Four bosses admitted it was the wrong decision after King complained.
King complained to BBC chief Mark Thompson, and then posted the Director General’s response on his website. In it Thompson says: “The BBC’s complaints process begins with a response from the relevant programme makers and I therefore asked my colleagues in BBC Four to address this matter. Their response is as follows: ‘We are sorry that Mr King’s appearance was edited out of this particular programme. We accept that this should not have happened and we would like to apologise for any upset this caused’. I want to join BBC Four in apologising for this incorrect decision”.
Thompson added that the ‘TOTP’ edit had been instigated by BBC Four producers off their own back, and was not the result of any BBC policy on the matter. He said: “We can assure Mr King that there is no policy in place requiring any of his appearances, or those of anyone else, to be removed from repeats we show on the channel. We can also assure Mr King that his performance will not be edited out of any future repeat of this particular episode of ‘Top Of The Pops'”.
King said that the BBC had “adopted the Stalinist revision approach to history” by removing his ‘TOTP’ performance from the BBC Four broadcast, adding: “The principle of not altering history is a far bigger one than ‘It Only Takes a Minute’ – would they remove Hitler from retrospectives?” A comment which does seem to constitute Jonathan King comparing himself to Hitler, which doesn’t seem entirely fair – I mean Hitler never released a record quite as nauseating as King’s version of ‘It Only Takes A Minute’.
