IN A blow to fame-hungry racists everywhere, the BBC’s Question Time is set to film without an audience during the coronavirus outbreak.
The corporation is also set to move the flagship political debate programme to a prime time 8pm slot on BBC One.
BBC media editor Amol Rajan said that the practicalities of how to continue taking questions is "still being worked on",
ITV's Loose Women and Channel 5's Jeremy Vine are already filming without audiences
Question Time's next episode is due to be filmed in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, on Thursday.
The programme, which is currently hosted by Fiona Bruce, has been running since 1979.
In recent years it’s often come under fire for some of the contributions made by members of the audience.
Last month, the SNP’s depute leader Keith Brown accused the show of normalising “extreme and racist views”.
The show was caused controversy last month after broadcasting a prolonged and frequently untrue anti-immigration rant from an audience member.
During the show, the woman called for the UK to “completely close the borders” to immigrants and complained about the number of people “flooding in” to the country and using public services.
Following the airing of the episode, the BBC then shared the clip of the rant on Question Time’s social media pages without showing a replay.
Brown told The National: “Extreme and racist views should not be normalised. The BBC must see that if Question Time continues to platform people – on the panel and in the audience – that hold such views and recirculate their comments then debates will get ugly.”
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