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Queen 'wants BBC documentary axed'

29/07/2007

Buckingham Palace and the BBC are engaged in a backdoor battle over whether a controversial documentary about the Queen should be broadcast, a newspaper reports.

The Mail on Sunday cites insiders at the Palace saying that the Queen wants the programme, scheduled to be shown later this autumn on BBC1, to be dropped because confidence in it has been damaged.

The BBC was left red-faced earlier this month after it and TV production company RDF Media were forced to apologise about a misleadingly-edited trailer for the documentary, A Year With The Queen.

The trailer, shown to reporters at the launch of the BBC's autumn schedule, implied that the Queen had stormed out of a photo shoot with US photographer Annie Leibowitz. What appeared to be the monarch leaving the shoot was in fact taken before it took place.

Although RDF boss David Frank has admitted his firm was "guilty of a serious error of misjudgement", the programme is still due to be broadcast later this year.

Despite this the Mail on Sunday reports that Buckingham Palace remains uncompromising in its demands for the show to be scrapped.

It claims BBC executives were forced into lengthy emergency meetings about the confrontation yesterday and adds that both sides are refusing to comment publicly about the issue.

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