BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs is a national treasure thanks to the way its genteel interviews of global superstars tease out personal passions linked to their love of music.
But the programme was forced to re-edit an interview with Canadian crooner Michael Bublé last week when he named his Rolex wristwatch as the one luxury he would take with him.
The BBC said it had not made it clear that Mr Bublé has been a a Rolex Testimonee for 10 years, leaving the corporation open to criticism that its strict rules preventing advertising on its shows had been breached.
A spokesperson for the BBC said: “It would have been preferable for us to have made Michael Bublé’s brand ambassador role clear. It is an affiliation he mentioned during the recording and we will include it in Friday’s repeat of the programme.”
In fact, Rolex does not officially have brand ambassadors, but it does feature Mr Bublé on its corporate website as part of its “Every Rolex tells a story” feature.
These features tell the stories of famous people’s love of their Rolex watches. In his story, Mr Bublé describes: “I have never really been a very materialistic person. I come from a hard-working blue-collar family. Becoming a Rolex Testimonee 10 years ago was a measuring stick as to how far I’ve come and how well I have done. And I have never taken it off, now I wear it in the shower with my arm out, just like my father.”
Do you mean “genteel” or is the BBC producing only non-Jewish superstar interviews?
Ha ha. Thank you for your proof reading skills.