Radio 2 chief agreed Brand phone calls could be broadcast

RADIO 2 controller Lesley Douglas knew about the obscene calls Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross made to 78-year-old actor Andrew Sachs before they were broadcast, a report revealed today.

A BBC management investigation published on the orders of the BBC Trust showed she knew exactly what was going to be aired - but was told by one of her senior managers that it was "very funny".

Ms Douglas, 45, quit her £280,000-a-year post over the affair, saying she took responsibility for events which "happened on my watch". But today the full details of the BBC's failure to prevent the broadcast were revealed. Ms Douglas authorised the show with a one-word email from her BlackBerry without hearing the prank call, which was broadcast on 18 October.

The report also found that Radio 2 head of compliance Dave Barber, who also quit over the affair, listened to the programme. He emailed Ms Douglas spelling out the phone call in detail.

Despite being the person charged with upholding the BBC editorial code, which bans invasions of privacy and the gratuitous use of offensive language, he describes the calls in an email to Ms Douglas (see below) and says he thinks the show should run with a "strong language warning at the top of the hour". He says he believes it is "editorially justified". Ms Douglas agreed with him the following day.

Sir Michael Lyons, chairman of the BBC Trust, said: "One of the BBC's most prominent performers has been suspended without pay for 12 weeks but the Trust is in no doubt that the ultimate responsibility rests with the BBC as publisher. It is the editorial management who are accountable."

He added: "This does not excuse Jonathan Ross for leaving the message on the phone of Andrew Sachs. I think that is what he has been personally held to account for."

Sir Michael called for more editorial oversight of "high-risk programmes". He said: "Putting Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross in the same studio, you could have predicted quite straightforwardly was going to be a risky situation. This isn't rocket science."

BBC trustee Richard Tait concluded that there were three failures: to exercise editorial control, to follow established compliance systems and a failure of judgment in editorial decisions.

Sir Michael added that the failings demonstrated a "very serious lack in editorial judgment and control" within Radio 2. "That's why the people responsible for that no longer work for the BBC," he said.

The Trust pledged that the BBC will tighten the controls currently in place, including training for BBC editorial staff, implement tougher penalties for staff who fail to comply and tighter controls on programmes produced by independents and introduce a register of high-risk programmes.

The Trust also criticised bad language in an episode of Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, in which the presenter told Gwyneth Paltrow he "would f*** her", saying it was "gratuitous and unnecessarily offensive".

BBC management had cleared the show for broadcast in May but the Trust today said that Ross made the comment in an "overly sexual way" and announced it had formally upheld complaints. Another BBC star, Radio1's Chris Moyles, also came under fire for a live show which the Trust described as exacerbating the row a few days after the calls to Sachs had been broadcast. It featured Brand telling Moyles that he had "met" Sachs's grandaughter Georgina Baillie before adding: "I met her brains out."