BBC apologises for Shashi Kapoor goof up

Britain’s public broadcaster BBC has apologised after showing two clips of the wrong person while reporting the death of veteran Bollywood actor Shashi Kapoor.

On Monday’s News at Ten, two video clips were played as presenter Huw Edwards announced the death of the 79-year-old Bollywood star, who died the same day at 5.20 p.m.

But neither of the men shown were Kapoor — one was his nephew Rishi and the other was actor Amitabh Bachchan, a BBC report accepted on Tuesday.

The programme’s editor Paul Royall apologised on Twitter on Tuesday for the mistake hours after the bulletin was aired.

“BBC News at Ten is very sorry wrong images were used to mark the death of Shashi Kapoor. Not our usual standards and I apologise for any upset.”

But the error was criticised by some of the corporation’s own stars on social media. Adil Ray, the creator and co-writer of BBC One’s Citizen Khan, tweeted: “Someone at the BBC thought the brown person in this VT is the same person.

“Worse still, neither of them are the deceased actor Huw refers to. It’s poor when it would have taken them seconds to verify. Not enough care.”

Aasmah Mir, who presents Saturday Live on BBC Radio 4, said she was “really annoyed” by the error.

In a statement, the BBC said: “BBC News at Ten is very sorry the wrong images were used to mark the death of Shashi Kapoor. The piece did not meet its usual standards and the programme has apologised for any upset.”

An Indian television news channel too mistakenly tweeted the demise of Congress politician Shashi Tharoor, while reporting on Kapoor’s death on Monday. They too, later apologised.