BBC fined £150,000 over Ross and Brand prank calls

The BBC has been fined £150,000 for the "gratuitously offensive, humiliating and demeaning" joke phone calls made to actor Andrew Sachs by Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand on Radio Two last year.

Media watchdog Ofcom said the size of the penalty "reflects the extraordinary nature and seriousness" of one the most damaging incidents in the corporation's history. It concluded that the broadcasts, which led to Brand's resignation and Ross's three-month suspension, exposed "very serious" weaknesses in BBC management.

In a pre-recorded segment of Brand's late-night show on 18 October, he and Ross left lewd messages on the Fawlty Towers star's answerphone about his granddaughter Georgina Baillie and sang a jokey "apology" to the actor, 78, which was broadcast the next week.

In its ruling Ofcom said: "The BBC broadcast explicit, intimate and confidential information about Georgina Baillie and Andrew Sachs without their consent. This not only unwarrantedly and seriously infringed their privacy but was also gratuitously offensive, humiliating and demeaning."

The watchdog said it uncovered holes in the BBC's handling of the Russell Brand show that placed the comedian's interests above its duty "to maintain generally accepted standards".

Ofcom said: "Creative risk is part of the BBC's public service role, however, so is the management of that risk.

"In this case, despite the Russell Brand show being considered by the BBC to be high risk' prior to these episodes, the broadcaster had ceded responsibility for managing some of that risk to those working for Brand."

Ofcom identified major flaws in the way the BBC handled the broadcasts, including that:

* No senior Radio Two manager listened to all the pre-recorded segment in which the phone calls were made before it was broadcast.

* The BBC did not obtain the "informed consent" of Andrew Sachs to the broadcast and made no attempt to get the consent of Georgina Baillie. 

* Compliance paperwork was not filled in and submitted before the 18 October show despite this being a condition of the production contract.

Ofcom said the BBC breached three rules of the Broadcasting Code over the incident, and that Radio One's Chris Moyles Show also breached broadcasting rules when Brand again joked about Miss Baillie.