Airing of BBC show about Harlequin postponed

KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, March 25, IWN — The BBC show about Harlequin, the company that owns Buccament Bay Resort, will not air today — Monday — as originally scheduled.

“It is not going to be broadcast today in the U.K.,” Matthew Hill, a journalist working on the programme told I-Witness News on Monday.

He however said he “can’t say” why the programme was no longer going to broadcast and that he “can’t comment … at the moment” about when or if the programme will be broadcast.

The Panorama programme, dubbed “The Great Savings Wipe Out”, was originally scheduled to be broadcast on BBC One at 20:30 GMT (16:30 Eastern Caribbean) today and at 04:30 GMT (00:30 Eastern Caribbean) on Thursday on BBC News Channel.

But the show’s website says that the episode “is not scheduled for broadcast” and suggested that visitors sign up for an alert for when it is available.

But a well-placed source, citing a BBC insider, told I-Witness News that the BBC is hoping that the programme will air in the near future.

The situation was described as “sensitive” at the moment, the source further said, adding that the impression was that the BBC was still gathering information.

Meanwhile, in the show promo, the BBC says, that chair of Harlequin, Dave Ames, a “twice-bankrupt, former double glazing salesman from Essex has collected an estimated quarter of a billion pounds from investors, which is now at risk”.

It further said that in one of Britain’s biggest ever pension scandals, Ames promised to build luxury rental homes in the Caribbean, including here in St. Vincent.

“However, reporter Paul Kenyon finds most of the planned properties have yet to be built and there are disputes over planning permission and land ownership,” the promo further said.

Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves has complained to the BBC about the “rude approach” of Kenyon and Hill when they asked him on a landed plane in Barbados in February about an allegation that Ames had gone to his office with a bag of money and left without it.

It was not clear if the delay in the airing of the programme was in any way related to Gonsalves’ complaint.