As the two entertainers bounded about the Western House studio two weeks ago, the adrenalin would have been coursing through their veins as they expressed their outlandish sense of humour. This morning Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand will be more muted. Perhaps even contrite.

Brand has resigned, Ross is suspended, cherished actors have been angered, ministers have spoken, Max Clifford has meddled and the BBC is deeply, deeply embarrassed.

The hurricane engulfing the corporation has its genesis in the Great Portland Street studio, where on October 16 two of the corporation’s brightest stars were recording The Russell Brand Show.The pair bombarded the answer-phone of Andrew Sachs, known around the world as the hapless Manuel from Fawlty Towers, with explicit messages about Brand’s sexual conquest of Sachs’s granddaughter Georgina Baillie, 23. After the recording, in which Sachs could not be reached for a prearranged interview, Nic Philps, the 25-year-old producer, got through to him with a series of extracts for him to review.

Sachs, 78, walking through heavy traffic, could barely hear on his mobile phone, but registered his unhappiness, and agreed to appear on the next week’s programme for a proper interview, expecting the offending segments to be excised. Instead, the offensive material was kept in, authorised by a more senior and as yet unnamed BBC executive and broadcast on Radio 2 two days later, with a warning that it contained offensive material.

Of the programme’s 400,000 listeners, only a couple saw fit to complain to the BBC. One of those was Sachs. On the following Wednesday his agent, Meg Poole, sent an e-mail and a letter to Lesley Douglas, the controller of Radio 2, demanding an apology. She and Sachs had listened to the show on the BBC website and had found it highly offensive.

A Sunday newspaper became aware of the material, and Brand was told that a story was likely to appear. In his next show, recorded a week ago, he included a somewhat unconvincing apology to Sachs, adding that he found the prank funny nonetheless. On Sunday the storm broke. What had at first seemed to be a bit of fun soon became a BBC crisis, with angry licence-fee payers filing complaints in their hundreds, and then thousands.

By Monday morning the figure stood at 500, by the evening it had shot up to 1,500. Mark Thompson, the BBC Director-General, was on a half-term holiday with his children. He was kept up to date with developments, authorising an apology in which the BBC accepted that the material was “unacceptable and offensive”.

By Tuesday morning the number of complaints had soared to 4,800. At 10.30am Ofcom, the broadcasting watchdog, announced that it would investigate the calls to see whether they fell foul of the Broadcasting Code regarding harm and offence.

An hour later the BBC Trust, the corporation’s governing body, said that it too would investigate the show, demanding a report from the management at a meeting of the board’s Editorial Standards Committee next week, as well as a “formal report” from Mr Thompson on November 20.

At midday David Cameron called for the BBC to explain properly how the calls came to be broadcast. Two hours later Andy Burnham, the Culture Secretary, joined in, saying that the programme had exhibited a “serious breach of broadcasting standards”.

As complaints passed the 10,000 mark, even the Prime Minister let his view be known, telling journalists on a trip to Paris that the calls were “clearly inappropriate and unacceptable”.

By yesterday morning BBC press officers were announcing that the number of complaints had passed 18,000. Ms Baillie, with the guiding hand of Max Clifford, had appeared in The Sun expressing her disgust at the trick played on her grandfather.

Facing the prospect of a full-scale viewers’ revolt, the BBC finally acted decisively. Mr Thompson cut short his holiday and announced at 11.30am that Brand, 33, and Ross, 47, were to be suspended and all their shows taken off air. Staff from Hot Sauce, Ross’s production company, were sent home after arriving at the BBC to film Friday Night With Jonathan Ross.

The BBC Trust announced that it had summoned Mr Thompson to appear before a hastily convened emergency meeting of its Editorial Standards Committee, to be held today.

At 5pm Ross offered his first public statement on the matter, admitting that he had made a “stupid error of judgment”. Half an hour later Brand announced that he had resigned from the BBC, taking “full responsibility” for the row. Last night the corporation had received 27,000 complaints.

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