Thatcher axed over golliwog remark

Her future with the programme was questioned after she referred to a tennis player as a "golliwog".

The daughter of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher made the remark after filming the show last Thursday during a conversation with presenter Adrian Chiles and several guests. She was immediately challenged about the remark, but only apologised on Sunday and dismissed the comment as a "joke".

A BBC spokesman said: "We will no longer be working with Carol Thatcher on The One Show."

The remark was made during a conversation about the Australian Open tennis tournament, in reference to a player who had recently been knocked out of the men's singles draw.

BBC sources said the comment caused great offence to those who heard it at the time and those members of the production team who heard about it later on.

Thatcher's job as a roving reporter for the programme required her to report on a wide variety of issues and to meet a range of people throughout the country, many of whom were unlikely to agree that her comment was acceptable even as a joke, the sources said.

Programme chiefs had hoped Thatcher Thatcher - crowned Queen of the Jungle in the 2005 series of I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! - would issue an unconditional apology to those she had offended but she declined to do so. As a result, her position on the show became untenable.

This did not mean she was banned from the BBC as a whole, but was simply no longer able to fulfil her current role on The One Show.

The sources said the corporation considered any language of a racist nature to be wholly unacceptable.