‘Have I Got News For You’ producer criticises BBC over Victoria Beckham joke ruling as “total waste of the licence fee”
Hat Trick founder Jimmy Mulville has criticised the BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit after it ruled Katherine Ryan’s gag comparing Victoria Beckham to a “c**t” was unjustified, calling the nearly year-long probe a “total waste” of licence fee money.
In an exclusive statement to Deadline, Have I Got News For You producer Jimmy Mulville has publicly attacked the BBC’s handling of a complaint about a Katherine Ryan joke comparing Victoria Beckham to a “c**t”. The BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit concluded the remark was editorially unjustified and ordered the line removed; the episode was later edited and re-uploaded to iPlayer without the joke. Mulville called the nearly year-long investigation prompted by two viewer complaints “a total waste of the licence fee” and said it illustrated the broadcaster’s “paranoia about causing offence.” The BBC has been approached for comment.
Jimmy Mulville slams BBC probe as “total waste” and an overreaction
Executive Complaints Unit finds remark editorially unjustified and orders removal
The BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit concluded that Katherine Ryan’s comment, which compared Victoria Beckham to a “c**t”, was editorially unjustified and should not have been broadcast. The unit said, “There was no justification for a comment which presented Victoria Beckham as equivalent to a particularly offensive word,” adding that BBC editorial guidelines require any offence to be editorially justified. Deadline reports that the ruling was reported to senior leaders in BBC content and that the original episode was edited before being re-uploaded to iPlayer; the joke no longer appears in the version now available on the streaming service.
Mulville says remark was placed in context and reflects reclaimed usage
Mulville told Deadline that Katherine Ryan and Victoria Beckham had exchanged Instagram messages that provided the gag’s intended context. He argued that, within contemporary queer and ballroom culture, the word has been reclaimed and can describe someone who is confident, impeccably styled, or “fiercely” feminine. Mulville maintained that Ryan — he described her as “a woman who would not disparage another woman in that way” — had not intended the line as a denigration of Beckham, and that the investigation failed to account for that context.