Humiliated BBC forced to apologise to Celtic over Tom English tweet

BBC bosses have had to make a humiliating apology to Celtic for the chief sports writer in Scotland. 

Last Friday, just a few hours after the death of Shane Warne was announced Tom English denounced Celtic as crass for expressing their condolences. 

Instantly it seemed wrong, English’s twitter feed was swamped with people appalled by the comment but in the bizarre bubble that he lives in the man from the state broadcaster probably took the backlash as vindication of his comment. 

With virtually no worthwhile contacts in Scottish sport outside of Gorgie, English lives off twitter to try and gain some relevance, endlessly trolling through Celtic fan media to form his opinions and create outrage inside his mind. 

Last Friday he couldn’t keep a lid on his contempt for Celtic, the most successful club in Scotland with a far bigger reach than any other sports outlet in the country. To be fair English knows that a derisory comment about Celtic brings him more attention than putting some thought into an article on any of the sporting issues of today. 

Rather than apologise for his tweet, late on Saturday night English tweeted that he had deleted his Warne tweet because it hadn’t met BBC editorial standards. There was no apology. 

Yesterday the BBC announced that they had apologised to Celtic for the tweet of their chief sports writer, English wasn’t named. 

With rolling television stations, multiple radio outlets and numerous websites, apps and podcasts the BBC is the biggest publisher in the UK by some distance. 

Corrections are very rare, apologies almost unheard of but yesterday, a week after his tweet, BBC had to apologise for a tweet from their sports writer in Scotland. Whether English will take the warning to heart remains to be seen, on past behaviour he’ll be even angrier and desperate to hit back at the club and supporters he clearly detests.