BBC apology over Allitt

BBC TELEVISION will today make its first on- screen apology for a lapse of taste since the Broadcasting Standards Council became a statutory body in January 1991.

The Leeds-based programme Look North will include a reading of the council's ruling last month condemning the opening sequence of its early evening report on 14 May on the trial of the nurse Beverly Allitt who killed child patients.

The menacing images were 'shockingly insensitive', the council said. The BBC admitted its error and explained that the sequence had been taken from a programme about the case, Unnatural Causes, due to be shown later in the evening.