BBC issued an on air apology on Radio 2 Saturday morning in order to try and make amends for the Russel Brand/Jonathan Ross scandal. Below is the text of the apology. (A slightly different version that didn’t mention Mr. Sachs’ wife and family was broadcast prior to this altered version.)
On 18 October, the BBC broadcast an exchange between Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross on the Russell Brand show on Radio 2.
This concerned the actor Andrew Sachs and his granddaughter, Georgina Baillie.
Some of this exchange was left on the voicemail of Mr Sachs.
The conversation was grossly offensive and an unacceptable intrusion into the private lives of both Mr Sachs and Ms Baillie.
It was a serious breach of editorial standards, and should never have been recorded or broadcast.
The BBC would like to apologise unreservedly to Mr and Mrs Sachs, Ms Baillie and their family, and to our audiences as licence fee payers.
From the BBC’s Editors blog:
From a 
EDITOR’S NOTE: This post had been updated/corrected with new information. Due to technical difficulties at Regret, this information was added later than we would have liked. We apologize for the delay.
BBC TV and Radio fell victim to a hoaxer last week. A man who said his name was Jude Finisterra and claimed to be a spokesman for Dow Chemical went on the air at the Beeb and said Dow was taking full responsibility for the 1984 Bhopal disaster, and had set up a $12 billion fund to compensate victim’s families and survivors. Here’s how the BBC described the Bhopal incident, “Thousands were killed instantly on December 3, 1984 when the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal released 40 tonnes of lethal methyl isocyanate gas into the air, in one of the world’s worst environmental disasters.”
