A Big Fat row over nothing?

Mail campaign generates 150 complaints

The Daily Mail’s campaign against Channel 4‘s Big Fat Quiz of the Year has had only limited success.

Just ten people had complained to the broadcaster and Channel 4 on New Year’s Eve - the day after the broadcast.

Yesterday, the Mail ran a front-page story about this ‘sick show they call comedy’ and reprinted jokes Jack Whitehall and James Corden made about the royal family, Usain Bolt and Susan Boyle.

The paper hinted that the number of complaints was likely to soar following its story – as it did when sister paper The Mail on Sunday broke the ‘scandal’ of Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand’s ‘Sachsgate’ phone calls – but by today the figure had risen to 160.

That represents an insignificant portion of the paper’s 4.25million readers, many of whom presumably did not see the original post-watershed show.

One of Whitehall’s comments was about the diamond jubilee celebrations,when he said: ‘I have a theory. She [the Queen] didn't sit down for the entirety of that thing, and people were talking about that. It was the day after the night of her anniversary and Prince Philip woke up with a urinary infection ... I'm just saying what everyone's thinking, people.’

The Tory MP Conor Burns said he would write to Channel 4 to ask why the ‘distasteful’ jokes were aired; and the Mail heaped on the pressure today with a follow-up opinion piece by comedian and musician Jackie Clune.

The show was watched by 3.1 million people on Sunday.

A Channel 4 spokesman said: ‘Big Fat Quiz of The Year is a well established comedic and satirical review of the year's events with well-known guests and was broadcast after the watershed with appropriate warnings.’

Published: 2 Jan 2013

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