Video: Brand's resignation statement

The Tories called today for a full Commons debate on the BBC's handling of the row over obscene prank phone calls made by Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross.

The day after Brand fell on his sword and resigned as a presenter on Radio 2, the corporation's governing body met this morning for crisis talks expected to focus on the fate of Ross, the BBC's highest paid star.

In a segment recorded for Brand's Radio 2 show, the pair left lewd voicemails for the 78-year-old actor Andrew Sachs - who played the Spanish waiter Manuel in Fawlty Towers - in which Ross joked that Brand had slept with Sachs's granddaughter.

Of the estimated 400,000 people who heard the segment, only two saw fit to complain to the BBC, one of them Sachs himself. But the story gained momentum after it was picked up in the weekend newspapers and the BBC today registered its 30,000th complaint.

The BBC has yet to name the Radio 2 executive who decided to air the material even though Sachs had made his objections clear. The corporation has also come under fire for its reaction to the public complaints, which have now reached 27,000.

Mark Thompson, the BBC Director-General, briefed members of the Trust's editorial standards committee today after breaking off from a family holiday in Sicily. He refused to comment on his way into the meeting.

Meanwhile, Theresa May, Shadow Leader of the House, used business questions to press for a full Commons debate on the row and the BBC's handling of it.

"There has been public outrage at the behaviour of Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand yet for several days the BBC seemed like a rabbit caught in the headlights, unable to act," Ms May told MPs.

"We need a debate in this House on the BBC’s handling of this incident because licence fee-payers have a right to know what went wrong and how similar incidents will be avoided in the future. “

Both Ross and Brand were suspended yesterday as the BBC finally took action, although Brand later decided to walk away entirely from his Radio 2 show, for which he earned £200,000 a year.

But Ross, who earns £6 million a year, is hanging on. Yesterday he issued an abject apology for his "juvenile and thoughtless" actions as the BBC pulled the plug on his Friday night TV show just hours before it was due to be recorded, and decided to air the Keanu Reeves blockbuster Speed in its place.

The BBC says that it does not keep tallies of complaints made to it, but in terms of its recent history the "Manuelgate" row now ranks with the furore over the corporation's decision in 2005 to broadcast Jerry Springer the Opera, which prompted more than 30,000 calls and letters of complaint.

In his resignation statement, Brand, a former heroin addict, paid tribute to Ross, calling him a "great broadcaster”. He said that Ross had been “silly” but “was not malicious” and added that he was a “lovely, kind, gentle man who did something a little bit silly”.

Brand said: “We made a mistake, crossed the line, ... What we did was wrong.”

The pair's suspension - and news that the media regulator Ofcom was to investigate the row - was welcomed by Georgina Baillie, Sachs's 23-year-old granddaughter who told The Sun: “I’m thrilled because justice has been done... Me and my granddad are both really happy because it could have damaged our reputation permanently.”

In a bizarre twist to an already surreal saga, she told the newspaper how Brand, knowing that she was Sachs's granddaughter, deployed Manuel's most famous lines during their fling. She said that he pranced around the bedroom yelling “¿Que?” and “I know nothing!”

“The fact that my grandfather was Andrew Sachs clearly tickled Russell," said Ms Baillie, who is a member of a burlesque dance troop called the Satanic Sluts Extreme. "But I never thought he’d use it to cause such a lot of damage.”

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