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BBC moves to halt impostors

Linus Gregoriadis
Monday 15 February 1999 01:02 GMT
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THE BBC announced new security yesterday to bar hoaxers and impostors from programmes after claims that researchers on The Vanessa Show hired bogus participants.

Guests will now have to sign a declaration certifying they will be truthful. Floor managers will warn audiences on the show and others like it that the BBC could take legal action against hoaxers. All guests must provide documents to prove who they are.

Staff on the show, hosted by Vanessa Feltz, were said to have paid a showbusiness agency pounds 100 per guest for two strippagrams to pose as feuding sisters. The pair had never met, according to The Mirror. An actress, who is single, was also hired to play an abused wife, the newspaper said.

Some sources said the pounds 2m programme, which started only last month, could be scrapped. Sir John Birt, the BBC director general, was said to be closely interested in the probe being made by Anne Morrison, hishead of factual programmes.

Entertainment agencies and fake audience members have confessed they duped the BBC and Trisha, a rival ITV production. A BBC spokeswoman said The Vanessa Show and Kilroy, a chat show hosted by Robert Kilroy- Silk, the former MP, would go ahead today.

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