EXCLUSIVE: BBC show antiques show faked too

TRASH IN THE ATTIC

By Dan Wootton

A man shown bidding £600 for an old doorstop wasn't even AT the auction—and he complained he was made to look "a sucker" because the item was only worth £50.

Yet even after his protest, BBC1 went on to REPEAT the episode and SELL it around the world.

The furious victim, 60-year-old Bob Warman, said: "Cash In The Attic should be renamed Con In The Attic. It's complete fiction. The doorstop's carved like a lion. I wouldn't bid anything for it, let alone £600."

Shots of Bob, a local TV newscaster in Birmingham, bidding at a DIFFERENT auction for an antique TABLE were edited into the show by programme makers Leopard Films.

It looked as if he had won a frantic bidding battle for the doorstop on the long-running show, now hosted by Angela Rippon.

The camera then cut to the doorstop's owners, laughing gleefully at the rip-off price he "paid".

Bob explained: "I was bidding for the table and was aware that there was a film crew there, but I did not know them and was not aware that I was being filmed.

"When the programme was shown I was called by friends who said I had been filmed putting my hand up to bid.

"The way it had been cut it looked like I was bidding for some old doorstop and bidding £600 for it, which just wasn't true.

"It cut across to the family selling the doorstep showing them rubbing their hands with glee and looking across at the bidder—who was supposed to be me—as if I was some kind of idiot.

"I wasn't even there. They had just edited me in from the other auction. It is disgusting. They sliced up sections of the edits like salami and just put them together to create what they wanted even if it wasn't true."

Bob raged: "Friends asked me if I'd lost my marbles. It was so embarrassing."

The programme makers also edited footage to make it appear he had been bidding for other items, including a carriage clock.

He added: "I have been in TV for 34 years and I would not want to believe that anyone would do this.

"It is totally unethical. Even friends of mine in the BBC came up to me to tell me privately they were disgusted at what had happened.

"The programme is still being sold around the world. I had one call from a friend in South Africa who said he saw it.

"These are not isolated incidents. It is arrogant behaviour and not acceptable from our state broadcaster."

"Heads should roll at the BBC."

The Birmingham auction house where the programme was filmed in March 2003 are furious about the deception. J Fellows and Son managing partner Stephen Whittaker said: "We won't be doing business with the BBC after this."

The BBC has already admitted to faking sequences in similar daytime antiques show Flog It.

The BBC Trust launched an investigation into scams at the corporation after the News of the World revealed in February that flagship BBC1 cookery series Saturday Kitchen had repeatedly misled callers.

Last week we also revealed the BBC Saturday morning series Dick and Dom in Da Bungalow was guilty of misleading viewers during a phone-in competition.

Last night a spokeswoman pledged to add Cash In The Attic to its investigation into TV faking and said it had changed the way auction shows were produced.