SikhSpectrum.com Quarterly
Issue No.34, January 2009
BBC issues apology to Philippines
Danny Chan
The British Broadcasting Corporation has formally apologized for a comedy show it aired that offended Filipinos both in the United Kingdom and in the Philippines, the Philippine government stated on Oct. 24.
The apology was contained in a letter dated Oct. 10 from Mark Thompson, the BBC’s director general, to Edgardo Espiritu, the Philippine Ambassador to the Court of St. James, the Department of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
In the letter, Mr. Thompson asked the Filipinos to accept his “sincere apologies, on behalf of the BBC, for the offense that this program caused.”
In a Sept. 26 episode of “Harry and Paul”, a comedy skit showed comedian Harry Enfield ordering his Filipino maid to mate with his friend Paul Whitehouse. The Filipino woman was shown gyrating in front of Mr. Whitehouse in an effort to seduce him.
Following the release of the show, which obviously upset the 200,000-strong Filipino community in the United Kingdom, the Philippine embassy in London sent letters to different British government offices, including the mayor of London and the BBC itself to protest the “slur” on Filipino domestic workers in Britain.
Filipinos in both the Philippines and Britain protested the “insulting reference to Filipino women, typifying them in a dual role as domestic workers and sex toys of their British employers”.
Overseas Filipino workers are considered “modern-day heroes” of the Philippines whose billions of dollars of remittances act as a cornerstone of the national economy in the Southeast Asian country.
