Former Aston Villa chairman Doug Ellis was nicknamed ‘Deadly Doug’ during his stint at the club.
However, that was because he had a propensity to sack managers, not because he was a member of Islamic militant group Hezbollah, as BBC subtitles incorrectly said.
During Villa’s game against Everton last month, commentator Steve Wilson said: “Great to see Doug Ellis here in his Villa scarf.”
However, the BBC subtitles made it seem as though the 91 year old was in attendance with the Lebanese political party who have a militant wing: “Great to see Doug Ellis here with Hezbollah.”
One eagle-eyed Match of the Day viewer spotted the error, and wrote this letter to the BBC Radio Times:
Birmingham MailA BBC spokesperson apologised for the error today, saying: “Match of the Day is a live programme and to subtitle it we used a method known as ‘live respeaking’.”
“The voice recognition technology misrecognised the word ‘Villa’ leading to the error. We apologise for any offence caused and are working hard to make subtitles as accurate as they can be”.
