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BBC veteran Buerk lambasts corporation's Jubilee coverage

"I was so ashamed of the BBC, I would have wept if I hadn't been so angry." Credit: Yui Mok/PA Wire

BBC veteran Michael Buerk has said he was "ashamed" of the corporation's "cringingly inept" coverage of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations.

Writing in the Mail on Sunday, the ex-newsreader launched a stinging attack on the summer's live broadcasts, for which the BBC received 2,400 public complaints, which he said had ridiculed the Royal family.

"The one enduring British institution was mocked by another that had shamefully lost its way," he said, adding that instead, "A succession of daytime airheads preened themselves, or gossiped with even more vacuous D-list 'celebrities'."