Golliwog remark gets Carol Thatcher in a jam
- 00:01:11
- ITN
Golliwog remark gets Carol Thatcher in a jam
The BBC has axed Carol Thatcher from The One Show after she referred to a tennis player as a golliwog. She made the remark after filming the show last Thursday during a conversation with presenter Adrian Chiles and several guests. The daughter of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was immediately challenged about the comment, but only apologised on Tuesday and dismissed it as a "joke". Her position on the show is understood to have become untenable after she declined to issue an unconditional apology to those she had offended. A BBC spokesman said: "We will no longer be working with Carol Thatcher on The One Show." The remark was made during a conversation about the Australian Open tennis tournament, in reference to a player who had recently been knocked out of the men's singles draw. BBC sources said the remark caused great offence to those who heard it at the time and those members of the production team who heard about it later on. Crowned queen of the jungle in the 2005 series of I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!, she had been a regular contributor to the magazine show. Thatcher's job as a roving reporter required her to report on a wide variety of issues and to meet a range of people throughout the country, many of whom were unlikely to agree that her comment was acceptable even as a joke, the sources said. They added her removal from the programme did not mean she was banned from the BBC as a whole, but was simply no longer able to fulfil her current role on the show. Thatcher's spokesman said she made the remark in a conversation with Adrian Chiles backstage. He said: "Carol never intended any racist comment. She made a light aside about this tennis player and his similarity to the golliwog on the jam pot when she was growing up. "There's no way, obviously, that she would condone any racist comment - we would refute that entirely. It would not be in her nature to do anything like that. "Carol is mortified that anyone should take offence at a silly joke. She has summarily apologised." Tory peer Lord Tebbit commented: "It does seem very odd that Jonathan Ross can be back broadcasting having made obscene, insulting remarks on the air, and Carol Thatcher, who said something which is allegedly highly offensive but which I rather doubt was meant to be so, in private, should be banned in this way. "It is probably a bit of a way for the BBC to get back at Carol's mother."
ITN | February 4, 2009
