Fake or Fortune fans blast BBC for editing out Fiona Bruce’s blunders on iPlayer after string of complaints
FAKE or Fortune fans have blasted the BBC for editing out Fiona Bruce’s best blunders on iPlayer episodes.
Eagle-eyed viewers of the beloved show have accused the show of fakery and complained about iPlayer not uploading some of the series’ most embarrassing gaffes.
The BBC is under fire from its viewers after they noticed that some of the times presenters Fiona Bruce and Philip Mould wrongly believed a forgery was genuine art had been taken off their streaming platform.
The programme follows Fiona and Phillip as they work with art collectors to establish whether their pieces are genuine or fake.
Fake and Fortune has been a ratings hit for the broadcaster, but several mistakes have been incorporated into episodes.
One of the most watched episodes, which contained an infamous blunder and has not been uploaded, involved the presenters authenticating a Monet painting, which was later confirmed as a fake.
During the 2011 episode, the team fought to have the Bords de la Seine à Argenteuil authenticated as an original Claude Monet, only to be rejected by the Wildenstein Institute.
Another highly rated blunder that has been removed saw Fiona and the team track down what was thought to be an original Winston Churchill oil canvas painting in a 2015 episode, only to unveil that it was also a fake.
The painting portrayed a picturesque scene of a mediaeval village in southern France, which Charles Henty owned.
It was discovered in the coal hole of Charles’ family home in London, where Churchill’s daughter, Sarah, had once been owned.
The painting was dated back to the 1960s and was painted in Churchill’s style but had never been authenticated before
On the show, they tracked down the village of St-Paul-de-Vence, with Fiona and art expert Mould trying in vain to authenticate the sunny image.
Eventually, collector David Coombes stated that he did not think Winston Churchill painted the picture.
Five years after the episode, the British artist Paul Rafferty uncovered a ‘smoking gun’ in the form of a thumbnail photograph of Churchill painting the scene.
This confirmation by Paul led to the photo becoming authenticated.
A year before that episode aired, a Churchill painting was sold at an eye-whopping £1.8 million at Sotheby’s auction.
Also removed from iPlayer is Fiona and Phillip’s celebration of a dawb painted ‘mainly by Lucian Freud.’
During that episode, which aired in 2016, Fiona and Phillip strived to authenticate the mawkish character as a Freud original despite the artist unquestionably denying he ever painted it.
Ultimately, the Fake or Fortune team got a panel of experts to agree that it was ‘mostly done by Freud’.
Series one of the program has not been uploaded to BBC iPlayer.