Michael Grade, ITV’s executive chairman, has ordered an independent inquiry into a documentary about an Alzheimer’s sufferer that wrongly claimed to show the man’s death.

Mr Grade is understood to be furious over the scandal surrounding the film Malcolm and Barbara: Love’s Farewell, which purported to show the final moments of Malcolm Pointon, 66, who had the disease for 15 years.

Mr Grade acted after a posting on the Times Online website by Mr Pointon’s brother, Graham, which said that ITV had misrepresented events in the programme, which is due to be broadcast next Wednesday.

Mr Grade said: “We need to discover why the film was originally understood to include the moment of death only for it to be established, after the intervention of Graham earlier this week, that he died some days after the last scene in the film.”

Mr Grade has instructed Olswang, the legal media specialist, to conduct a “thorough but speedy investigation” into the affair.

The misrepresentation was noticed before the film’s screening, but it has become the latest in a series of scandals over “fakery” in British television.

Mr Grade said: “This is a very serious matter. I am on record as taking a ‘zero tolerance’ approach to deliberate deceit in television programmes. I intend to establish the facts in this case as quickly as possible. I will publish the conclusions of the report and then take effective action as necessary.”

ITV executives were furious after discovering that the director, Paul Watson, pioneer of the fly-on-the-wall documentary genre, had prefaced the final scenes of his film with a misleading voiceover. He has agreed to reedit the film, line by line, to remove the impression that he was filming Mr Pointon’s death.

His voiceover states that Mr Pointon’s wife, Barbara, contacted him on February 8, 2007, to say that “by the day’s end Malcolm’s journey would be done”. There follows a series of poignant scenes around Mr Pointon’s bedside, culminating in a freeze-frame indicating his death. However, those scenes were shot on the preceding Monday and Mr Watson did not return for Malcolm’s final moments. The reedited film will correct the false impression.

Mr Watson said that he chose not to film the death. “I was getting in the way of the family,” he said yesterday. “I was only getting the same pictures. There was a wonderful ambience in the room. I couldn’t wait for him to ‘go’ more quickly, for the sake of his relief from Alzheimer’s. But I did not set out to deceive and I will know that until my dying day.”

Mrs Pointon told BBC Radio 5 Live that she “may have added to the confusion” when giving promotional interviews about the programme. But she defended the final scenes. “Paul filmed Malcolm’s last semiconscious moments, because after that Malcolm slipped deeper and deeper into unconsciousness, into a coma, and he just faded away,” she said.

“Does it really matter whether it was two minutes, two days or two months after that part? It doesn’t alter the message that Alzheimer’s kills.”

Mr Watson’s reputation could be damaged by the affair. He made the ground-breaking 1974 series The Family, and first filmed the Pointons almost a decade ago, for an award-winning film.

After filming the final moments of an alcoholic in the BBC2 film Rain in My Heart last November, he said: “When I heard he would die, I admit, I thought, ‘that’s going to make great telly’. And you’d be a hypocrite if you didn’t think it. That’s how inured to tragedy we’ve become.”

Mr Watson said yesterday that he had asked ITV to put in “five words to explain absolutely that the picture you are looking at is not of Malcolm’s death”. ITV said the request was made only after Graham Pointon had gone public on the website.

Dissenting voices

“ This is an important film. It was unnecessary to sensationalise it. There is an important distinction between a person dying and the moment when a person dies.”
Graham Pointon

“I did not set out to deceive and I will know that to my dying day. I find myself the scapegoat between two warring factions.” Paul Watson

“Does it really matter whether it was two minutes, two days or two months after? It doesn’t alter the message that Alzheimer’s kills. There’s been a bit of a media circus. Inadvertently, I may have added to the confusion.”
Barbara Pointon

“We have begun a formal inquiry. But it is correct that Paul Watson approached ITV on Monday to suggest a clarification in the film about the moment of death.”
ITV

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