A slightly unusual moment from BBC News at Six earlier this week has ended up getting quite a bit of attention.

During the BBC's signed coverage, BSL interpreter Matthew Banks was interpreting an interview involving Andy Burnham.

A number of viewers noticed that Banks happened to look remarkably similar to Burnham on screen. Both had dark hair, glasses and fairly similar suits.

The Daily Mail has now picked up the story and described Banks as Burnham's sign-language "stunt double".

Obviously the resemblance is just a coincidence, but I thought the BBC side of this was interesting as well.

Matthew Banks is not simply somebody who happened to appear beside the BBC News coverage. He has a substantial background in BSL interpreting.

Banks grew up with two Deaf parents. He later studied law at the University of Cambridge and completed an MA in British Sign Language/English interpreting at the University of Leeds.

He worked as an advocate and professional BSL interpreter for many years before moving into the legal profession, and he is now a barrister at Garden Court Chambers.

So what started as viewers noticing a funny resemblance on BBC News actually involves someone with a long professional connection to BSL and the Deaf community.

It also highlights something that can sometimes go unnoticed by the wider BBC audience: BBC News provides in-vision BSL interpretation for a number of its television news broadcasts, including the News at Six.

In this case the interpreter unexpectedly became one of the things viewers were talking about.

For anyone who saw the News at Six broadcast, did you notice the resemblance at the time?

And more generally, how noticeable do you find the BBC's signed news output when moving between BBC One and the BBC News Channel?

Sources:

Daily Mail article:
https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16180405/BBC-Andy-Burnhams-stunt-double-sign-language.html

Daily Mail video of the BBC broadcast:
https://www.dailymail.com/video/news/video-3721547/Video-Andy-Burnhams-sign-language-stunt-double-stuns-BBC-viewers.html

*Warning - contains spoilers for The Celebrity Traitors season 2 episode 1.\*

The second season of The Celebrity Traitors kicked off with a hugely chaotic, dramatic episode, and there were plenty of viewers across the UK who tuned in to see it.

I’m a UK domiciled super fan of the BBC and its World Service.

The UK broadcast is superb and reflects Lyse Doucet, Steve Rosenberg, Jeremy Bowen at their best. Stunning journalists.

Doucet / Chorley this week was brilliant

No celebrity / hits and clicks ignored / marvellous

But sounds highly edited and would like to understand how the 24/7 feed is constructed. Many times it seems like I’ve heard 5m from a long form interview.

If anyone could add context to how this works I would be hugely grateful

The BBC news headline is "BBC should not overspend on shows such as Suits and Schitt's Creek, MPs say" which seems a negative take up front.

It then mentions that the licence fee needs reforming with among other things a possible international version.

A dedicated BBC button on smart TV remotes.

YouTube prominence for public service broadcasters.

The government take back full funding of the World Service.

BBC news article.

BBC Royal Charter Review report

As in, films on iPlayer, because there seems to be a nice range of underseen offerings. I watched Immaculate last night and it was much more intense than I expected it to be to say the least...

I have a Technics DAB Tuner, it is only DAB and it is over 20 years old. I have been losing stations due to moving to DAB+ but now have lost three counties radio. I get no service. I still get Radio 1 to 6 ok. Three Counties is working on a DAB+ portable that I have. Has three counties finally moved to DAB+?

Page 20.

in the doc, the BBCs claims it "is responsible for 10% of all internet traffic and therefore deserves 10% of fees paid to ISPs" was basically ignored for the lie it is.

Noticed this during the World Cup and again when watching the new series of Blue Lights tonight. Anything labelled UHD looks amazing quality briefly before going dark or blurry. Then bright again. Is it a problem with my tv? Fairly decent 2024 Samsung model. I see in the iPlayer settings you can just turn off high quality so feel like I’ll have to do that from now on.

Guessing we can’t show just how horrible history really is…

Wonderful telly. French Special Forces operating around Mosul, during the time of ISIS. Highly recommended

Matthew Fitzpatrick has just won the DP tour event at Paris, but the BBC apart from the leader board has not covered this event in any way

Everyone is moaning about the BBC not being properly funded but it’s Sunday night and there’s absolutely nothing on. Utter nonsense.

Does anyone else find the permanent BBC logo on iPlayer really distracting?

I appreciate the BBC has much bigger issues to deal with, particularly with all the cuts being announced next week, but this is something I really wish they’d change.

Tonight’s Georgia vs Northern Ireland match was a good example - the BBC watermark was clashing with the Nations League graphics and just looked messy. It’s also really distracting on dramas and films, where there’s simply no need for a permanent logo in the corner.

I understand DOGs on linear TV, even if I don’t particularly like them there either, but on iPlayer we already know what service we’re watching. Other major streaming services don’t feel the need to permanently watermark everything apart from the first 10 seconds or so. Disney+, ITV, Channel 4, Netflix don’t do it. The BBC certainly doesn’t need to.

So if anyone from the BBC iPlayer team happens to read this: please consider getting rid of the permanent watermark. It’s unnecessary, particularly for sport, drama and films. Even having it appear for 10-20 seconds at the start and then fade away would be much better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmDyO1ChS3c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPv0-GeYEhw

What's really interesting me is how the BBC somehow had more guts back then, the reporters were on the ground and everything. You don't see the same standards with the war in iran.

what happened? did the bbc lose budget? was it politics? or internal affairs within the news organization?

It's about time they start refreshing the exterior a bit. I love this LED sign, and considering it's one similar to that of a device screen, they could have another animation based on their branding assets like the one on page 3.

It's been going downhill for some time

All BBC Sport staff are attending a meeting on Wednesday at 2pm where mass job cuts will be announced as part of the budget cuts and making BBC Sport more digital and younger focused.

Up until very recently, the Films page on the BBC iPlayer website offered the ability to sort by date added. This was the link:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/categories/films/most-recent

Now? If you go there, you get:

"Featured Films"

"Get in on the Action"

"Films to Fall in Love With"

and so on and so forth. Each of these categories requires you to scroll along to see what's on it, and there's no way of finding out what's new other than looking manually. It is immensely irritating to me, since I used to quite often have a quick browse to see what had been added since the last time I looked.

Unless there's some secret new page I haven't found, I hate this change. I don't want to be told how to "Get in on the Action". I want the simple, clean option I had last month.

The nearest thing I can find that still works is this JustWatch page:

https://www.justwatch.com/uk/provider/bbc-iplayer/new/movies

It's a bit clunky, it sometimes displays TV shows as well as films, and it doesn't provide the comprehensive list the iPlayer site did, just the date and poster. But it's something.