BBC axes shows featuring maker of pug Nazi salute video

The BBC has scrapped two episodes of a new late-night debate show that feature a man found guilty of a hate offence for teaching his dog to do a Nazi salute.

Controversial YouTube personality Mark Meechan was filmed alongside reality TV star James English and Edinburgh-based dominatrix Megara Furie for The Collective, launching in April on the new BBC Scotland digital channel, The Times reports.

But following an outcry after the line-up was revealed by a Sunday newspaper, BBC Scotland has announced that the episodes featuring Meechan will be edited out of the series.

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The 31-year-old blogger was arrested and convicted of being “grossly offensive” in 2018 after he uploaded a video to YouTube showing his girlfriend’s pug dog doing a Sieg Heil salute alongside Nazi imagery.

Meechan, from Coatbridge, in Lanarkshire, also chanted variations of the phrase “gas the Jews”, repeating the slur around 23 times in a few minutes of footage, The Scotsman reports.

This week, Meechan “boasted to his social media followers that he was still refusing to pay the £800 fine handed to him by a judge at Airdrie Sheriff Court”, the newspaper adds.

A statement released by the BBC yesterday said that the broadcaster had decided it was “not appropriate” to include him as a contributor.

Responding on Twitter, Meechan - known online as Count Dankula - said he was not surprised by the decision.

He wrote: “Due to the media getting outraged I got deplatformed and I am being edited out of the show. I fully 100% expected this, even while filming I was thinking ‘No one is gonna let this air’. So it’s not a surprise to me. Can’t have people seeing what I am really like can we?”