Will Wyatt's verdict on the 'Queen-gate' editing saga is damning, and unfortunately for the BBC, riveting reading. The programme's producers are "cavalier"; BBC executives handling the emerging crisis "naive" and everybody was guilty of "misjudgements, poor practice and ineffective systems".

The result is two senior resignations - the worst day for executive casualties since the aftermath of the Hutton report - and a revealing portrait of a BBC, a production company, and Buckingham Palace making a series of mistakes that resulted in false claims about the Queen "storming off in a huff".

It is hard to read the document and conclude anything other than that heads had to roll. Peter Fincham, the multi-millionaire friend of Griff Rhys Jones, quits his job at BBC One because he presided over a process in which nobody checked, or realised it might be important to check, footage which purported to show the Queen storming out of a photoshoot with Annie Leibovitz. Nevertheless, he boldly presented it to journalists in July, saying that the Queen was "in a bit of a huff".

That, though, was pretty much known or could be guessed at. What also emerges from the report is the chaotic reaction of the BBC as it gradually dawned in the hours after the photoshoot. At 7pm, Fincham knew the sequence of the clip was wrong - when the Queen appeared to be going out, she was in fact walking in - and at 9.44pm a retraction had been agreed with the Palace. But all agreed to let the story run in the newspapers so they could "check the temperature".

The result was that the story, even though it was known to be incorrect, ran in newspaper after newspaper, meaning that the retraction when it eventually came the next day was all the more embarassing. Most dammingly of all, though, in the chaos, nobody thought to alert the Director-General on the day of the crisis - indeed at no point before the clip was aired or in the immediate aftermath did anybody think that a documentary of the Queen was the kind of important programme that needed to be closely monitored.

For Stephen Lambert, the creative brains behind RDF Media, the independent producer that made the programme, the verdict was even worse. It was he, as far back as April, who actually put the clips of the Queen out of sequence, in a promotional video designed to whet the appetite of co-investors. That sequence never disappeared, and while Lambert didn't actually force it on the BBC for their own promotion of the show, it ended up as part of the BBC One autumn season launch because, frankly, if true it was too good to ignore.

Having been responsible for the original "cavalier" edit, Lambert's resignation was the only option, and the company he leaves may not survive.

Even bit-part players come off badly from the report. The Palace comes across as slow to react to the emerging crisis, as does Peter Fincham's immediate superior, Jana Bennett, who is described as showing 'a lack of curiosity' in finding out what went wrong once the problem emerged.

Nobody set out to deceive in this sorry saga, but a failure to check, the complexity of the relationships between the BBC and the independent producer, a failure to realise how serious the problem was, and what Wyatt describes as "the usual helping of bad luck" conspired wickedly to embarrass the state broadcaster. Above all, it is the BBC that should be most able to handle relationships with the sovereign. But it didn't and embarrassed itself: resignations are the right response.

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• Charles blazes trail as sun king
• Thalidomiders win payout 50 years on
• Libel gag on talk of 'medical hurricane'