Bargain Hunt

IT was inevitable, I fear, that pensioner Jim Samuels, who even his closest friends might regard as prickly, would find something amiss with his appearance on BBC's Bargain Hunt.

Mr Samuels was featured on the programme last month, bubbling with enthusiasm as he and his wife Maureen wheeled and dealed their way through an antiques fair in Peterborough before watching their 'bargains' sold at auction.

Lo and behold Mr Samuels now tells any one who will listen- including the Daily Mail- that elements of the programme were faked, so adding to the corporation's woes, no doubt, in the process.

So what parts were fixed? Well according to Mr Samuels he had longer than an hour to buy his items- "all the time in the world"- and the moment they bought items was actually pre-rehearsed!

"They came round with a cameraman where we were pretending to buy the stuff," protests Mr Samuels, a little too loudly if you ask me.

It's called editing, Jim, which is what broadcasters and photographers and editors have been doing since Caxton was a baby.

Bargain Hunt's 'crime', if one was committed, was surely to have on their programme a man who earlier this year was found guilty of using racially aggravating behaviour and causing harassment, alarm or distress.

That after telling a black driver outside Maple Grove School in March that he should be "sent back to his own country."

I always recall Mr Samuels' solicitor telling magistrates at the time "it is not a criminal offence to be irritating." Perhaps it's something Gordon Brown might now consider!