BBC's Have I Got News for You reprimanded for "offensive" Victoria Beckham comment – but producer hits back

The BBC has upheld complaints over a joke made about Victoria Beckham on Have I Got News for You, ruling that the remark was gratuitously offensive and unjustified.

However the show's creator and producer, Jimmy Mulville, has publicly hit back at the decision as a "total waste of the licence fee".

The corporation's executive complaints unit (ECU) found that a comment on the 7 November 2025 episode, hosted by Katherine Ryan, presented Victoria "as equivalent to a particularly offensive word" and had no editorial justification.

As a result, the episode has been edited to remove the joke on BBC iPlayer, and the finding has been reported to the management of BBC Content.

The episode had discussed an email allegedly sent by Sir David Beckham in which the c-word was used. Ryan told the panel: "I don't know that we are allowed to broadcast the c-word, but you did reference Victoria Beckham earlier and we'll allow that."

Two viewers complained that the comment was gratuitously offensive. In its ruling, the ECU drew a distinction between the two uses of the word. It said: "The relevant BBC editorial guidelines do not require programmes to avoid giving offence, but do require that any offence should be editorially justified."

The unit added: "In the ECU's judgement, while the inclusion of the c-word in the programme derived editorial justification from David Beckham's alleged use of it and the satirical reflections this prompted, there was no such justification for a comment which presented Victoria Beckham as equivalent to a particularly offensive word."

The BBC had previously defended the broadcast when viewers first complained about the language, saying the use was "editorially justified" because the panel was discussing a current news story, and that a clear verbal warning had been carried at the start of the post-watershed programme. "It is never our intention to offend our audience," that earlier statement said.

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The show's producer, however, is unhappy with the outcome. Jimmy Mulville, co-founder of Hat Trick Productions, told Deadline that the investigation was an example of "the BBC's paranoia about causing offence".

Mulville argued that the ECU had missed the intended meaning of Ryan's joke, saying the host and Victoria had exchanged messages on Instagram about the remark.

"In contemporary queer and ballroom culture, the word has been reclaimed," he said. "It is used to describe someone who looks extremely confident, impeccably styled, fierce or authentically and powerfully feminine. Katherine Ryan is a woman who would not disparage another woman in that way."

He continued: "The fact the two members of a 6 million audience took offence, which then triggered a year-long investigation by the BBC's Executive Complaints Unit, whom we've never met and sounds like something out of Kafka, is a total waste of the licence fee and is another example of the BBC's paranoia about causing offence."

Radio Times has approached the BBC for comment.

Have I Got News for You is available to stream on BBC iPlayer.

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Authors

Katelyn Mensah is the Senior Entertainment Writer for Radio Times, covering all major entertainment programmes, reality TV shows and the latest hard-hitting documentaries. She previously worked at The Tab, with a focus on reality TV and showbiz news and has obtained a BA (Hons) in Journalism.