Stephen Fry forced to cancel Japan trip after nuclear bomb jokes
Stephen Fry has been forced to pull out of a planned Planet Word shoot in Japan after joking about the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
He was due to arrive in the country earlier this week for the BBC show to examine how the Japanses language is changing but his researchers are now looking for another Asian location.
Fry sparked the row after describing Tsutomu Yamaguchi as the “unluckiest man in the world” in an episode QI, the BBC panel show. Yamaguchi is famed for surviving both the nuclear bombs that fell in Japan at the end of World War II.
Apparently there were concerns about 'ongoing threats' to Fry as a result of the row, and the show's producers felt it was not worth risking injury to make a programme on culture.
Yamaguchi, who died last year aged 93, was on a business trip to Hiroshima when it was attacked in 1945. However, he managed to get a train home to Nagasaki and, as he was telling his boss what had happened, found himself a victim of the second bomb.
Panellists on the BBC show expressed amazement that public transport could still operate under the circumstances and poked fun at British train services with one mentioning 'the wrong bomb' on the tracks.
The Japanese Embassy did not see the funny side and complained to the BBC who apologised.