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BBC apologises for Qi joke

The Japanese Embassy in the UK has complained about an episode of Stephen Fry's Qi.

The BBC has apologised to the Japanese Embassy in the UK following a complaint about an episode of Stephen Fry’s Qi.

In a panel discussion about ‘The Unluckiest Man in the World’ Fry discussed the death of Tsutomu Yamaguchi who died last year aged 93.

Yamaguchi was badly burned in the Hiroshima bombing in 1945 but got on a train the next day to go home to Nagasaki, which was bombed 3 days later.

He is the only person who has been recognised by the Japanese government as having survived both bombings.

As is the style of Qi, panellists including Alan Davies and Rob Brydon joked about the events.

“The bomb landed on him and bounced off?” asked Davies.

“He never got the train again, I tell you.”

Wondering if he was the unluckiest or the luckiest, Brydon said: ‘Is the glass half-empty, is it half-full? Either way it’s radioactive. So don’t drink it.”

Several were surprised to learn the train was still running after an atomic attack.

Embassy officials sent a protest letter to both the BBC and producers Talkback Thames. Yamaguchi’s daughter Toshiko Yamasaki, 62, said she could not forgive the show “as it looked down on my father’s experience”.

A producer said “we greatly regret it when we cause offence” while the BBC apologised for “any offence caused” and said it would be writing to the Japanese Embassy.

The ABC will be resting Qi with the end of the summer ratings period.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dgzszWlG6c[/youtube]

Source: Daily Mail

22 Responses

  1. BBC shouldnt apologise for anything. Likewise my Grandad never got an apology from Changi. CK its all well and good blaming the so uncalled unfair treaties on Japan. However, they should never behaved the way they did during the War in Asia and Pacific with war crimes. You’re very lucky that the Royal family werent also tried for war crimes, you can thank McArthur for that! To me this stinks of hypocisy

  2. Well, I am Japanese and was not offended.
    But I understand if fellow Japanese people find it offensive.
    We’re not allowed to talk about the war openly as we were ‘the losers’ & ‘bad ones’.
    We are not even allowed to lament such great losses because ‘we started it in the first place’.

    But it’s hard to pinpoint what really ‘caused’ the WWII.
    I wonder the UK and US’s control over Japanese ports since 1860s ultimately inspired the Japanese to ‘invade’ other countries.
    Japanese lived ‘peacefully’ for 200 years without much fuss about other countries before the UK and US forcefully ‘opened’ Japan and made them sign a very unfair trade deal.
    Also they didn’t need the second bomb but the US desperately wanted to ‘test’ two different types of A-bombs then. And we can’t question it because we are ‘losers’.
    People need to study history in many different angles.

    But it was 66 years ago and it is natural for people from other countries to think A-Bomb incidents were now a part of history – things like the Napoleon War and the US Independence. But many Japanese still live with it.
    I like English and Aussie jokes – they can be bad taste but after having lived in Australia for a long time I prefer jokes here than over there.

  3. Such a shame Mr Tamagotchi (or what-ever his name is) wasn’t on holiday in Hawaii sightseeing at a place called Pearl Harbour (sic) on December 7, 1941! After that he could have island hopped home…….Guadalcanal, Palau, Guam, Saipan, Iwo-Jima and Okinawa. Then Hiroshima and finally Nagasaki… just in time to see the war they started…stopped for good!

  4. I agree with GuanoLad – they wasn’t anything particularly offensive about the jokes. I’m more in agreement with them about the British rail system – the Japanese rail system works after an atom bomb was dropped, in Britain, a bit of snow and the entire thing shuts down.

  5. Not sure what irks me more – the media creating a story again where there isn’t one (and causing distress to his daughter when she likely wouldn’t have been aware of it) or the hypocrisy of a government that still lies about WWII atrocities and supports the killing of whales for “scientific” purposes.

    I think some leeway has to be allowed for this type of program. It is (mostly) unscripted comedy and IMO no-one appears to be behaving disrespectfully toward Mr Yamaguchi.

  6. But humorous appearances in the popular media are how stories are told these days. The story of Yamaguchi has probably not been heard in Western culture before yet this panel show has exhibited it in a way that many people will remember. This is how culture communicates.
    (Wow – my communication degree Hasn’t gone to complete waste!)

  7. Not a delightful subject, sure, but that’s not even close to controversial.

    It does please me that the ABC is starting to look upon Qi as more than just a filler program.

  8. They seem to have taken offence to something that isn’t offensive. As is increasingly common. The jokes are about the incident itself and it being so amazing, and not at the expense of Mr Yamaguchi.

  9. And what are the odds that Yamasaki would never have even known about the episode had the media not found her…?

    Oh, and “The ABC will be resting Qi with the end of the summer ratings period”?

    Said it before, will say it constantly. The ABC should not care about its “ratings” and should ignore commercial TV “seasons”. But hey, ah well, every QI viewer I know already knows where to see it first.

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