Jerry Springer The Update

By Rob Last edited 230 months ago
Jerry Springer The Update
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Just a quick update on the whole Jerry Springer the Opera debacle we reported on at the end of last week.

There's a report in today's Times which shows just how out-of-hand this whole thing has got:

"Yesterday security guards continued to monitor the North London home of Roly Keating, the Controller of BBC Two, who received threats from protesters. The homes of six other BBC executives were also targeted after an evangelical Christian group posted the addresses and telephone numbers on its website."

Mr Keating stayed at his house over the weekend (with "round-the-clock security") while his wife and three young children left on Saturday morning.

And now of course it's time for the lawyers to get involved. The Beeb's legal department have already instructed the Christian Voice group to remove BBC executives' personal details from its website and details of all the death threats have been passed to the police.

And for their part, Christian Voice have declared that they will sue the BBC in a "a private blasphemy action".

And the real irony behind all this? The BBC only received 317 calls following the screening on Saturday night (as opposed to the 47,000 calls and letters it received before people had actually seen the production)...and almost half of those phone calls were positive.

Not surprising when you think that it only pulled 1.8m viewers. That's 1 million less than Match of the Day got on BBC1.

Last Updated 10 January 2005