ITV has dropped the British Comedy Awards and blamed a filmmaker for misleading it over the on-camera “death” of an Alzheimer’s victim in the latest revelations over television “fakery”.

Channel bosses said they would not broadcast this year’s British Comedy Awards, the Jonathan Ross-presented show, which has become a highlight of its schedule.

The broadcaster admitted that viewers had previously been solicited to take part in a premium-rate vote for their favourite show after the winner had already been picked.

Viewers believed that the 2005 show was broadcast live. But the show was interrupted for the news, while the event continued off-air.

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Viewers continued to vote 25 minutes after the winner of the People’s Choice Award - Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway - had already received the award. Staff are believed to have raised concerns with ITV managers but no action was taken.

ITV yesterday called in media lawyers Olswang to conduct an investigation into the event. A spokesman said: “Pending conclusion of the investigation, broadcast of the British Comedy Awards 2007 will be postponed.”

However Michael Hurll Television, the production company which owns the rights to the show, is furious and plans to go ahead with the show - including Ross as host.

A source said: “We have been singled out while other shows are still continuing under investigation. The Comedy Awards will continue, with another broadcaster if necessary.”

ITV also published the results of an Olswang investigation into the controversial documentary, Malcolm and Barbara: Love’s Farewell.

Pre-broadcast publicity centred around the claim that the film showed the moment of death of Malcolm Pointon, an Alzheimer’s sufferer.

Mr Pointon’s brother revealed the truth when he posted a comment on Times Online. He said Paul Watson, the acclaimed “reality” documentary-maker, had actually stopped filming days before the death. ITV asked him to re-edit the film before broadcast to remove the misleading claim.

The Olswang investigation found that Mr Watson was the “primary source of the misunderstanding about what was shown in the film.” The award-winning Sylvania Waters director failed to take numerous opportunities to “correct the clear misapprehension” he had given.

Michael Grade, ITV boss, said anyone who knowingly misleads the broadcaster will never work for it again. But the report said Mr Watson had no intention to deliberately mislead ITV, which should have done more to verify claims made in the programme.

Mark Thompson, the BBC Director-General, yesterday said that some editing “tricks” were no longer acceptable. He banned Alan Yentob from being filmed “nodding” at interviewees on his Imagine arts programme, when he was not actually present himself at the interview.

He also said Newsnight was wrong to show footage out of sequence in a report which claimed to demonstrate that Gordon Brown's staff had sought to prevent a reporter from asking him questions.

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