ITV has been berated by viewers and forced to apologise for including the Scottish flag in a title sequence for a programme they showed on Saturday called Dumb Foreigners. It seems that there were upwards of 100 complaints from Scots who were ever so slightly miffed that ITV should think them foreign. I was unfortunate enough to see a couple of minutes of this programme, and can report back that it’s basically a compendium of poor sub-You’ve Been Framed video clips from around the world. The brief section I saw involved people surfing with kites, and guess what? They fell in the see from time to time. How dumb can foreigners get? Who’d have thought that surfers fall off their surfboards, bmx-ers their bikes or skiers their skis?
While I can understand the offence taken by Scottish viewers, I was altogether offended by the name of the programme and the footage featured. This is the worst case of the xenophobic “Little Englander” mentality we see all too much of. Dumb ITV Execs Commissioned This Steaming Pile of Crap would be a fairer title.