Cassetteboy foiled by copyright

A comedy internet mash-up of Andrew Marr’s fawning portrait of the Queen has been removed from YouTube following a complaint by the BBC.

The corporation made a copyright claim against the montage, which was cut to apparently show Royals and celebrities making comments about the Queen having sex with Palace visitors.

BBC chiefs have previously turned a blind eye to the work of Cassetteboy, the web name of Mark Bolton and Steve Warlin, when they have cut together clips from the likes of Dragon’s Den, the News and The Apprentice.

The BBC has even hosted a video titled Cassetteboy vs Party Leaders, made as part of an end-of-year round-up presented by Miranda Hart in 2009.

Cassetteboy deleted the Diamond Queen video after being made aware of the complaint by the BBC.

On their Twitter feed, they explained: ‘If you're interested, here's what happened: Our video was removed by youtube after a copyright claim by the BBC. We then deleted the vid so people could no longer see the error page blaming the BBC, as some people were getting annoyed with the BBC, which probably isn't fair as the BBC has been good enough to tolerate all our other videos. That's it really.

‘We're not planning to put the video online elsewhere. Sorry, you'll just have to be quicker next time.’

The BBC was given unique access to the Royals for the three-part documentary The Diamond Queen, which featured exclusive interviews with members of the Royal family including Princes William and Harry, The Duke of York and the Princess Royal.

However, Cassetteboy’s take on it was probably not in keeping with the corporation’s deferential and celebratory attitude to this weekend’s Diamond Jubilee events.

Marr's commentary was cut to make sentences such as: 'The Queen's legs... are open up to people of all walks of life. She's going to be laying 67 British people here. It is something the Queen has done thousands of times with the the Prime Minister.'

It is not the first time that the BBC has stopped footage of the Royals being used for comedy.

Last year, Australian satirical team The Chaser were refused permission to commentate on the official footage of the Royal Wedding, supplied by the BBC, as the corporation said its agreement with Buckingham Palace barred comedy and entertainment programmes from using live footage of the ceremony.

Despite the ban, which has also removed several copied versions of the original, the new Cassetteboy video is still, at the time of writing, online here.

Published: 30 May 2012