The BBC has launched an investigation into how a caller using repeated offensive language made it to air on BBC Radio London and was not taken off sooner.
The caller phoned in to Sunny and Shay’s BBC Radio London show, which is hosted by married couple Mandeep “Sunny” and Gursharonjit “Shay” Grewal, on Saturday night.
The caller, who said he was from Greece, said a number of offensive words including the N-word with presenter Sunny.
Then the presenter seemed to completely ignore the caller talking about a board game that “kills n*****s and gays”, with the latter continuing to speak live on air.
The conversation was held in honour of National Monopoly Day on Friday and the caller was discussing the version of the game they played in Greece.
He said: “Since I have moved to London from Greece, I have played Monopoly with my friend.
“But in my country we play a game where you are a white nationalist and kill all the n****s and gays.”
The caller went on to repeat the N-word at least half a dozen times with the host saying he “maybe lost the caller in translation”, before continuing the conversation with him.
The caller was allowed to continue unchallenged for around two minutes before coming to an abrupt end when he used the f-word, repeated an offensive comment once again and was finally cut off.
Even though the presenters apologised on air, many have still questioned why the caller was allowed to carry on for such a long period of time.
Calls have been made by members of the public for the BBC to strengthen their protocols surrounding phone-ins to ensure something like this does not happen again.
Voice-over and newsreader Zora Suleman voiced her outrage aimed towards the faults of the presenters on Twitter:
Every time I’ve had the misfortune to hear these presenters I’m shocked at how bad they are and how they can still be on-air. I wonder how #Ofcom and the #BBC will deal with this. Racist and spoof caller phones into #BBCLondon – presenters & producers fail to realise /act?pic.twitter.com/OPFNUk7IKP
— Zora Suleman (@ZoraSuleman) November 22, 2020
To add more confusion to why the BBC allowed this to happen, after the episode aired it was uploaded to BBC Sounds with the slurs still included.
The BBC said it is investigating how the call was able to air and said the interview had been removed from BBC Sounds.
They aim to re-evaluate their procedures and protocols to ensure calls like these are no longer passed through.