The head of the BBC on Wednesday ordered a “fast-tracked” internal investigation into the “serious mistake” that saw a racist slur aired during the BAFTA awards.

He was heard shouting as Sinners actors Delroy Lindo and Michael B Jordan, who are both black, presented an award for special visual effects in the movies at the ceremony.

The investigation will probe why the slur was aired despite there being a two-hour delay between filming and the broadcast, and why it remained on the BBC’s streaming service iPlayer until the following morning.

“The BBC has been reviewing what happened at BAFTA on Sunday evening,” the broadcaster said in a statement.

“This was a serious mistake, and the Director-General (Tim Davie) has instructed the Executive Complaints Unit (ECU) to complete a fast-tracked investigation and provide a full response to complainants,” it added.

The probe was welcomed by Culture Minister Lisa Nandy, who described the broadcasting of a racial slur as “completely unacceptable and harmful”.

“The BBC must ensure that this never happens again,” she said.

Staff failed to pull a livestream of a performance by Bob Vylan after the punk-rap duo’s frontman led the crowds in an anti-Israel chant.

The BBC later apologised and said it would no longer live-broadcast musical performances it deemed to be “high risk”.

But it could still be heard when it aired two hours later.

Tourette’s campaigner Davidson said he believed the BBC should have “worked harder” to ensure his offensive words were not broadcast.

“I have made four documentaries with the BBC in the past and feel that they should have been aware of what to expect from Tourette’s, and worked harder to prevent anything that I said … from being included in the broadcast,” he told US trade magazine Variety.

The BAFTA broadcast is the latest scandal to hit the BBC.

Davie is due to leave his post in April after he resigned in November over the editing of a documentary about US President Donald Trump.

The president has filed a $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the BBC over the edit for its flagship current affairs programme “Panorama”.

Trump alleges the editing of his January 6, 2021 speech made it appear that he had explicitly urged supporters to attack the Capitol, where lawmakers were certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.

Composer Ismail Darbar and filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali have several notable collaborations. The composer scored the music of many of Bhansali’s early hits, including Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam and Devdas, both known for their iconic soundtracks. The two were set to reunite after years in Heeramandi, Bhansali’s ambitious project, before the filmmaker decided to score it himself.

In an interview with Subhojit Ghosh on YouTube, Ismail Darbar looked back at his exit from Heeramandi, which was in development for half a decade before its 2024 release. The composer said of Bhansali, “He betrayed me, not once, but twice. He committed to working with me, and then didn’t do so. I had worked on Heeramandi for 1.5 years, and he didn’t tell me before replacing me.”

The composer added that Bhansali tried to reconcile later by inviting him to the show’s premiere, but he felt heartbroken and could not attend. “We used to fight during the making of every song. I respect him a lot in this matter because he gave my family and me a lot of love. We had a good bond till Heeramandi, he called me from the front to invite me to the show’s premiere. He had told me that he didn’t call anyone else but me, but by that time, my heart had already broken. If Sanjay and I would have done Heeramandi together, we would have created history,” Darbar added.

Ismail Darbar began his journey as a composer in Bhansali’s Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam in 1999, for which he won a National Award. He has composed music for around two dozen films in his career.

Bollywood actor Taapsee Pannu recently addressed the film industry’s obsession with female actors’ midriffs and cleavage. The actor clarified that her earlier remarks about Bollywood being obsessed with cleavage and the South film industry with midriffs were taken out of context. She also revealed why she initially chose not to take up such roles at the start of her career.

She further clarified that she never demarcated it as Hindi being obsessed with cleavage and the South with midriffs. She also spoke about how she was never asked to expose her midriff or pad her bras in Bollywood, but was asked to do so in the South, largely because she did not take up glamorous roles in Hindi cinema.

She said, “I don’t know what the obsession is, but let’s own that there’s an obsession, whether in Hindi or in the South. Which part of yours is highlighted, that’s not the point. The point is, there’s an obsession. It was obviously awkward for the director as well because they had to convey this to me. And how do you do that when the set hardly has any women, right? So, you have to convey it indirectly. When she comes back from the van, the director obviously has to check whether it works or not. So, this whole process is slightly awkward.”

She further defended taking up those parts and said, “I was too new. I thought this was how it’s done. The director is the captain of the ship, and you have to listen to the captain. I had to do it, unless it was really crossing the line. You also feel this is what heroines are doing, so I’m also supposed to do this. I never look back at it thinking I wish I hadn’t done those parts. Because if I didn’t do it, I’d always be craving to do that. No matter what you do, you want to be called a mainstream actress. Unless you do those parts, you won’t be called a mainstream actress.”