Bear-faced BBC liars no surprise.

Byline: LORNE JACKSON

IN the classic caper movie, The Sting, Robert Redford is Johnny Hooker, a low grade confidence trickster eking out a living in 1930s America.

After his mentor is wacked by a mobster, Hooker goes in search of the greatest con artist of them all, Henry Gondorff, who he hopes will help him to plot a revenge scam.

Gondorff - Paul Newman with a Village People moustache - turns out to be a drunken, dishevelled mess, employed as an odd job man by a whore-house madam.

Hooker isn't impressed - and why should he be?

Being a professional scammer, he knows the most important rule of the game.

To rip people off, you've got to look respectable as a bank manager.

Eventually Gondorff gets his act together, slips on a sharp suit, spit-spot spats and snappy snap-brim hat.

Hooker also prepares for action.

Hair is slicked back, nails buffed.

Suddenly a couple of dodgy geezers exude wisdom and power.

They have become class acts - perfect for the big con.

There are also quite a few class acts working for the BBC. (Come on folks, you realised I was going somewhere with this painfully laboured analogy, right?)

Like Hooker and Gondorff, Beeb bods ooze wisdom and power.

And, like Hooker and Gondorff, all is not as it seems.

The corporation is in more hot water than a lobster in Gordon Ramsay's kitchen, after it was revealed that many top shows, including Children In Need, have been rigged.

The news comes only a few days after Blue Peter was fined for faking a competition winner.

In the same week, the Beeb also admitted a preview for a documentary about the Queen was cut to make it appear as if the monarch stormed out of a photo shoot, instead of striding into one.

Shockwaves over these scams and shams have been profound.

Rival TV stations have been eager to lambast the BBC.

Even the BBC has been eager to lambast the BBC, making the cracks in its own credibility the main item on the Ten O'Clock News.

I'm as shocked as everybody else.

Shocked, that is, that everybody is so shocked.

It's disappointing and depressing that people working for the Beeb have conned viewers.

But similar cons have been perpetrated by other TV stations.

Yet everyone thinks it's a whole lot worse when it involves Aunty.

Why?

Are Beeb employees ethical giants, striding through a world of card sharps and used car salesmen?

When you punch-in at Broadcasting House, does that automatically give you the moral authority of the Dalai Lama?

I don't think so.

The Beeb employs thousands of people. And they're all made of flesh and blood, which means they have plus points and fatal flaws - like everybody else in this fallen world.

I'm sure it's true that some BBC staff work hard, and are committed to truth, justice and the Reith doctrine way.

Others just skive.

Some stole Sherbet Dips from the corner shop when they were kids.

Some still do.

Others have affairs. Or beat the wife.

Or harbour sordid fantasies involving Blue Peter badges, Pudsey Bear, silk stockings and Fern Cotton.

To believe that being hired by the BBC instantly places a person above shoddy work practices or underhand behaviour isn't merely wrong.

It's gullible, and hands the corporation the kind of paternalistic, moral kudos that was enjoyed by Catholic priests in a bygone era... before they started getting caught fondling alter boys.

And I'm not particularly impressed by the Beeb's coverage of its scandal.

Don't tell me the corporation showed humbleness or contrition.

Making out that its scams are a bigger deal than dodgy dealings on other channels merely underlines its inflated sense of its worth.

Hooker and Gondorff polished spats and trimmed moustaches to turn themselves into smooth operators.

Today they wouldn't bother.

To construct a flimsy facade of respectability, the con artists would merely snag themselves a couple of passes for the BBC car park.

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