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Keith Chegwin brands student on newspaper work-ex placement an “idiot”

A regional daily has issued a tongue in cheek apology to Keith Chegwin after the celebrity labelled a student on work experience at the newspaper an “idiot”.

Chegwin told Adam Burns, who is on placement at the Liverpool Echo, to “get your facts right” in a Twitter rant after he wrote a piece which claimed the former Swap Shop presenter had come out in favour of the UK leaving the European Union.

Liverpool-born Mr Chegwin, pictured below, denied saying he would be happy to be the “face” of the Vote Leave campaign during a web chat for bingo company mFortune Bingo in which he was asked for his stance on Europe.

However, the Echo says it received a press release from the company which stated he would be willing to be the “face” of Vote Leave.

Chegwin

The piece which Adam wrote quoted Mr Chegwin as saying: “I’m Brexit! There you go. I’m honest about it. The only reason being is because, yes we can stay in and renegotiate new terms. But I think it’s always better to shut the door, than open it again and agree better terms.”

However, the newspaper has apologised to Mr Chegwin after the same piece wrongly reported he had appeared naked in an episode of the Ricky Gervais sitcom Extras.

It was, in fact, fellow Liverpool-born comedian Les Dennis who had done so.

Mr Chegwin had only appeared naked on screen, save for a hat, in his role as presenter of Channel 5 gameshow Naked Jungle.

Chegwin tweeta

The Echo ran a follow-up which reported the star’s comments on social media, pictured above, about Adam, a second year politics student at the University of Chester.

David Bartlett, the Echo’s executive editor for live news, said: “We would like to apologise to Keith for muddling up the programme in which he appeared naked.

“We accept he was fully clothed in Extras, while he wore just a hat when he hosted the Naked Jungle.

“The press release from mFortune, the bingo company for which he was doing this web chat, also clearly said he was willing to be the face of the Vote Leave campaign.

“If Keith has changed his views on Brexit, we’ll happily carry a follow up. As we said in our second story, we still want to be friends.”

10 comments

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  • June 8, 2016 at 8:56 am
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    A lesson for many there. Don’t just publish press releases without checking a few potentially dubious ‘facts’ and don’t hang the work-ex out to dry by seemingly bylining him, or in some other way identifying him as the person who sourced the quotes.

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  • June 8, 2016 at 9:51 am
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    Where to start. Just makes you want to go and live in the Cook Islands and read some John Pilger.

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  • June 8, 2016 at 10:13 am
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    As Adam’s in the firing line, it would be interesting to get his take on this…

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  • June 8, 2016 at 10:42 am
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    What!! Is this what the Echo has come to? “It’s in a press release so it must be true”?? What happened to checking sources? I think the Echo has dropped a clanger with its explanation here. The fact is Keith Chegwin himself says he didn’t say that. It seems the Echo doesn’t like apologising from the sounds of it.

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  • June 8, 2016 at 12:23 pm
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    Has Mr Chegwin ever heard the one about the pot and the kettle?

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  • June 8, 2016 at 1:35 pm
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    Is this what the Echo has come to??

    Yep, and the Mails, Couriers, Telegraphs and Posts etc etc

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  • June 8, 2016 at 2:22 pm
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    The odd thing is, a clanger has been dropped – they happen – but the Echo has seemingly decided to turn the Twitter comments into a follow up story – strange, presumably they also contacted HTFP with the story too? Dunno – desperate times though.

    Hope the lad doesn’t feel bad about it.

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  • June 10, 2016 at 4:35 pm
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    For one awful moment I thought Jeff Jones was missing the chance to criticise the Liverpool Echo or one of its journalists. Order restored.

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