Brand and Whiley quizzes 'faked'

A member of staff won a competition on Brand's show

Shows hosted by Russell Brand and Jo Whiley are at the centre of two new cases of misleading the public in radio competitions, the BBC has said.

Callers were invited to participate in "live" competitions on pre-recorded episodes of the 6 Music and Radio 1 shows which were broadcast in 2006.

Both networks will broadcast apologies to listeners this week.

The BBC is contacting listeners who sent text messages to the shows to offer them compensation.

The corporation's director general Mark Thompson said that a competition winner on the Russell Brand show was not a listener, but was in fact a member of BBC staff.

The programme, which was usually broadcast live, had to be recorded for the second show in its series and was transmitted on 9 April 2006.

No opportunity

Listeners who had called or sent texts to the programme had no opportunity to participate.

The BBC said the conduct of producers rather than the presenters had been under investigation.

The breach in editorial policy on the Jo Whiley Show occurred three weeks after a previous incident where a member of staff posed as a phone-in competition caller on her show.

Despite the programme being pre-recorded to permit engineering work in Radio 1's studios, listeners were invited to enter a competition in the show broadcast on 12 May 2006.

The contestant was a genuine member of the public who had expressed an interest in entering the competition the previous day.

However the name of a second participant, who was mentioned on air, was invented.

The incidents came to light when Mr Thompson updated the BBC Trust, the corporation's regulatory body, on the BBC's progress in dealing with breaches of its editorial standards.

The BBC also said it was lifting its ban on commissioning programmes from production company RDF, who were responsible for making a misleading trailer for a documentary featuring the Queen.