Newsnight tribute to the Queen’s 70-year marriage is wrong

Newsnight viewers have slammed the show and threatened never to watch it again after it got the Queen’s wedding anniversary wrong twice last night.

Emily Maitlis said that Her Majesty married Prince Philip in 1937 in a ‘monumental foul up’ by BBC 2’s main news show.

The presenter also gave a botched history lesson about Neville Chamberlain trying to appease Adolf Hitler and turmoil across Europe.

Setting the wrong scene she said: ‘The Conservative Prime Minister was engaged in crucial talks on the continent while facing mutiny from his own ranks and Spain was in crisis’, adding: ‘Some things don’t change’.  

In reality the Queen was a child in 1937 and married the Duke of Edinburgh ten years later when Britain and the Allies had defeated Nazi Germany and the Spanish Civil War was over.

Emily Maitlis said that Her Majesty married Prince Philip in 1937 in a ‘monumental foul up’ by BBC 2’s main news show last night (pictured)

The show’s apology caused more outrage with viewers calling the ‘whoops’ in an official tweet flippant

The blunder led to a slew of criticism and complaints. 

Ms Maitlis also gave a dodgy history lesson history lesson after the autocue blunder

Viewer Cormac Murphy‏ said: ‘According to Newsnight the Queen got married aged 11! They corroborated this by mentioning the Spanish Civil War and the Tory’s political problems all of which must have been very distracting to the poor child on her wedding day. Why haven’t we been told about this before?’.

Viewers believe the error would have made former presenter Jeremy Paxman ‘splutter into his Ovaltine’.

The show’s producers later apologised on Twitter and said: ‘Whoops! We gave the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh an extra 10 years of marriage. It was of course 1947 – sorry’.

But this caused more upset. 

James Hearn‏ responded: ‘This is not just a “Whoops!” situation. This was a prepared item containing news film. The work of several hands and scripted. Unbelievable incompetence and ignorance’.

@mvarcoe tweeted: “Whoops!” – a trivial way to respond to perhaps the most incompetent piece of journalism ever on @Newsnight!!!!’.

Another user said the error had ‘made her a child bride’, because the Queen was 11 in 1937. 

Emily Maitlis joked: ‘Just testing to see who watched to the end’ and thanked people for correcting their mistake.

It is understood the error was made by the production team and she read their script off the autocue.

Viewers were outraged by the mistake and some even threatened never to watch the show again

Last week the show caused controversy after it mocked stories about BBC shift workers sleeping on night shifts.

The popular current affairs programme used its closing credits to poke fun at criticism staff were snoozing at work.

Emily Maitlis quipped that BBC output was ‘quite literally dreamed up by producers in their sleep’.

As the show ended the camera then cut to sleeping producers on mixing desks as a baby’s lullaby played in the background.

After last night’s error one viewer brought this up again and said: ‘You certainly were asleep tonight – 2017 minus 70 is not hard’. 

 

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