Sir Ian Botham has threatened never to speak to the BBC again over claims that it ambushed him on air with an “anti-shooting agenda” when he was trying to promote a charity.
The former England cricketer, 61, said that he agreed to appear on Radio 5 Live’s breakfast show to talk about his plans to donate 10,000 pheasants and partridges that are shot on his estate to food banks.
The interview turned prickly when Rachel Burden, the presenter, asked him what would have happened to the birds if they were not donated to the Country Food Trust charity.
“The BBC lured me on to their show under false pretences and ambushed me with their anti-shooting agenda,” he told The Times yesterday.
Sir Ian, who was given the nickname Beefy during his playing career and works as a presenter for Sky Sports’ cricket coverage, said that he had been subjected to online abuse since the interview. He has been supported by the Countryside Alliance, which claimed that the BBC had an inherent bias “against the countryside and rural pursuits”.
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“Incidents like this appalling treatment of Sir Ian Botham show why people feel this way. The BBC is singularly failing its rural audience,” said Tim Bonner, chief executive of the alliance, which backs bird shooting and has campaigned against the ban on foxhunting with hounds.
During the BBC interview on Monday Sir Ian said that the birds, shot from his Sawley Hall estate in North Yorkshire, would have been exported to Europe where game meat is more popular than in England.
Animal rights groups claim to have filmed gamekeepers dumping dozens of dead pheasants in ditches and pits on shooting estates. The Countryside Alliance said this was because the birds were unfit for human consumption. Dead pheasants are also exported to France because of a lack of demand for their meat locally.
Ms Burden suggested that “a lot of people” had a problem with shooting birds for sport. “Millions of birds, up to 50 million birds, are bred each year to be shot,” she said.
“And how many chickens are bred every year?” Sir Ian retorted. “How many chickens are bred with a six-week life?” Ms Burden broadened the conversation to include grouse shooting, which has been vehemently opposed by the BBC wildlife presenter Chris Packham. The grouse shooting season starts on August 12. “You are wrong. You are wrong,” he said. “There’s nothing to do with grouse. This is about pheasant and partridge. Pheasant casserole and partridge curry, which we are giving. Now if you have a better solution I am willing to hear it.”
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Nicky Campbell, Ms Burden’s co-host, attempted to soothe the conversation by praising Sir Ian’s food bank initiative and then discussed the ethics of hunting lions, which Sir Ian condemned.
Sir Ian told The Times the BBC had tried “to stir up every animal rights controversy they could think of and link it to my name”. He added: “It is now clear to me that the BBC’s approach was part of an anti-shooting agenda and there was never any intention of talking about creative ways to fight poverty.
“I will never be speaking to the BBC again in any capacity unless something significant comes of this complaint. BBC 5 Live asked me to talk about a charity that is trying to do some good. I agreed in good faith, thinking everyone would want to support our efforts to help people in need.”
The BBC rejected Sir Ian’s complaints last night. “The interview was fair,” said a spokeswoman for the corporation, which is holding a four-day Countryfile Live event at Blenheim Palace today. “We asked a broad range of relevant questions and gave him the fullest opportunity to respond on air.”
The League Against Cruel Sports, an animal rights charity, said that bird shooting was “steeped in cruelty” and accused Sir Ian of trying to “whitewash the reality of shooting”. “The fact that Sir Ian Botham sees nothing wrong with blasting hundreds of game birds out of the sky for fun is a concept rejected by most people in the 21st century,” Philippa King, its chief operating officer, said.
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• We wrongly said that Sir Ian Botham had sworn in the course of an acrimonious BBC interview about pheasant shooting (“Botham fired up over BBC ‘ambush’ ”, News, Aug 3). We apologise for the mistake, which was based on a mishearing, and for any embarrassment caused. In reporting the same interview we said that “animal rights groups have filmed gamekeepers burying large numbers of dead pheasants because of a lack of demand to eat them locally”, Representatives of the shooting industry dispute this and have stated that only birds unfit for consumption are disposed of in this way . We are happy to make this clear.