Pointless Celebrities has come under massive scrutiny after two of it’s contestants were accused of racial stereotyping.
Keith Chegwin and Iain Lee were taking part on the BBC quiz when they gave an answer which many considered to be racist.
The pair were asked to guess the name a pop group from a visual clue, which in this case was two young Asian girls looking at several spices.
The answer was pretty obviously Spice Girls, but instead they opted for Cornershop. Ah.
What made this whole situation even worse is the fact that fellow contestants, Michelle Heaton and Anthony Costa, also admitted they’d have gone for that answer too. For fuck sake.
Before the right answer was read out, Iain finally realised their error, saying: “It’s the Spice Girls, isn’t it?”, while Keith hid behind their podium in sheer embarrassment.
The people of Twitter were quick to share how pissed off they were:
Unbelievable racism from Keith Chegwin on #pointlesscelebrities thinking clue for Spice Girls was Cornershop!? #pointless #bbc
— Brendan (@instabren) April 30, 2016
Cornershop answer from both teams on pointless. A bit racist that. Spice girls surely
— Walnuts (@PaoloWalnuts) April 30, 2016
#pointless on #bbc how racist was the celebs on the 1st H2H question #everydayracism. 2 asians 1st thing they think is corner shop lol.
— Darth Ry'dar (@DarthRydar) April 30, 2016
Haha pointless celebs just said "cornershop" because it was two Indian girls stood next to some spice… it was spice girls #racists
— Aran (@AranBailey) April 30, 2016
But Iain Lee didn’t seemed to fussed by the whole situation and even made a joke out of it on his Twitter bio:
Before unleashing his disapproval of everyone’s comments:
https://twitter.com/iainlee/status/726467686125817856
https://twitter.com/iainlee/status/726469036054294530
https://twitter.com/iainlee/status/726469205810360320
A number of his followers pointed out that they would have said Cornershop too, which clearly shows how much casual racism still exists in this country:
https://twitter.com/iainlee/status/726512044304945152
What a time to be alive.