The BBC has today decided to make a clean fist of things by issuing a list of apologies for all the other stuff it’s made up in the name of state-funded fact. The list includes:

• The “vast Inca city” discovered beneath Huddersfield by Alan Titchmarsh on Time Team was in fact a landfill site in Dewsbury, strewn with turkey bones and cheap jewellery.
• Recent reports on the Litvinenko case, purporting to show photographs of prime suspect Andrei Lugovoi, actually used library shots of Christopher Timothy from All Creatures Great and Small.
• The adventures of “time lord” Doctor Who, including a trip to the end of the universe some several trillion years in the future, were all clever fakes.
• The “Bruce Forsyth” seen presenting recent episodes of Strictly Come Dancing is a hologram. (Watch the footage carefully and you’ll see his hand doesn’t quite line up properly every time he slaps Tess Daly’s arse.) The real Bruce’s knees gave out in 1986.
• Recent footage on the Barrymore case was “sexed up” by BBC executives and contained a number of untruths. For example, Barrymore is frequently referred to as an “entertainer”.
• Despite recent statements from the BBC, the Queen is indeed a mardy old trout.

UPDATE: Christ, BBC, I was joking.