Dibley producer hits back at impartiality report
Peter Bennett-Jones, the co-executive producer of The Vicar of Dibley and chairman of Tiger Aspect has hit back at claims that the January 2005 special of the popular BBC1 sitcom broke a number of BBC editorial guidelines.
The row stems from an internal BBC Trust report which expressed concerns about the risk of allowing special interest groups, including the Drop the Debt campaign, to get their messages across by targeting BBC entertainment shows rather than news bulletins. The report singled out The Vicar of Dibley as one blatant example of this. It pointed out that the episode 'Happy New Year' had "breaching the letter and spirit of four of the corporation's editorial guidelines by promoting the Make Poverty History campaign".
Bennett-Jones has responded through Media Guardian by saying: "I am very puzzled why this report has focused so unduly on The Vicar of Dibley when it didn't generate one single complaint from 12 million viewers. I am not denying there wasn't an agenda but we knew we were in areas where editorial policy would have a view and we would need clearance. We went to see the director general downwards. We were totally open about what we wanted to do."
According to Mr Bennett-Jones Tiger Aspect went through a "vigorous process" with BBC editorial policy team to clear the episode in question. The BBC did ask for a number of changes to be made, including the removal of a mention of the campaign's website, but that they had no problems at the time in regards controversial one-minute Make Poverty History campaign video watched by the Dibley parishioners.
Although the BBC received no official complaints following the broadcast of the episode on the 1st January 2005 it is widely accepted the episode did not go down as well with fans as previous episodes had.
A number of critics and viewers expressed their dissatisfaction that comedy had been 'hijacked' by the Drop the Debt cause which, whilst a worthy campaign, they felt was not best promoted via a comedy programme. One BSG reader summed it up as follows: "...after they'd shown that starving kids clip there was no way I could laugh again that evening - the message they were trying to send was completely out-of-place in a comedy".
A BBC Trust spokeswoman said: "If Peter does write to us we will consider the letter and get back to him."
The hard hitting report, which was bizarrely titled "From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel", also slammed the corporation for being out of touch with large swathes of the public, being overly politically correct and "coming late" to several important stories in recent years, including Euroscepticism and immigration. It would seem the BBC have a lot of work to do!