Stephen Lambert, the magnificently monikered Chief Creative Officer at TV production company RDF, is carrying the can for the Queen promo.

Last Friday he offered to resign, but David Frank (the DF in RDF) is waiting for the BBC inquiry to run its course (or get going even).

When not offering to resign, Lambert is busy buying shares in his own company. According to the Sunday Times, he “bought 12,747 shares at 233p [£30k to you], upping his stake to 2.6m shares [£6.1m]…”

Isn’t this punishment enough? After all the Beeb only had to shell out £50k for fixing competitions on kids show Blue Peter.

Last Friday, Lambert told the Guardian:

He said the original clip was part of a five-minute tape to be shown in private meetings to international broadcasters who were acquiring A Year With the Queen, a series going behind the scenes in the royal household. “In order to make it coherent without the commentary, I felt you needed a different approach,” he said.

Mr Lambert denied that he had intended to deceive and said none of the broadcasters who saw it came away with the impression that the Queen had stormed out of the photoshoot being conducted with the US celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz.

He said: “In retrospect, this was a serious editorial misjudgment, but in this context, and without any commentary, these shots did not convey the interpretation that was later placed on them as being a record of the Queen storming out. All that was being attempted was to convey a brief sense of a slightly ruffled encounter.”

Few thoughts.

• The promo is indeed edited out of sequence without commentary. IMO, it shows what you want it to show. That’s no one’s fault, nor is it a “serious editorial misjudgment.”
• It was Peter Fincham who introduced the promo material and suggested to journos the chronology of the two-shot sequence and the interpretation to place on it, saying “Annie Leibovitz gets it slightly wrong and the Queen walks out in a huff.” Either Fincham was fed a line, or he jumped to conclusions. That was where the “editorial misjudgment” took place.
• I tend to save the word “serious“ for things that are – well – serious. But let us not pre-empt the Wyatt inquiry and its wide-ranging remit to investigate…a promo

So what do we make of the claim that in the end “all that was being attempted was to convey a brief sense of a slightly ruffled encounter.”

As the Sun reported in May:

Ms Leibovitz, who has photographed a host of Hollywood celebrities, said she was “honoured” to take the atmospheric snaps at Buckingham Palace.

But admitted The Queen was not the easiest subject at first when she was called to wear some of her Royal robes for the shoot.

The Vanity Fair photographer said The Queen entered the room and muttered: “Why am I wearing these heavy robes in the middle of the day?”

“She doesn’t really want to get dressed up anymore. She just couldn’t be bothered.

“I admire her for that. When you get to that age, you have a right to have those kinds of feelings.”

Well, BFD.