The British Academy Film and Television Art, also known as The BAFTA awards are usually seen as something of a precursor to the American Academy awards ceremony, in which the likely winners are predicted or chosen.

And while there have been a few surprises in recent times, Ryan Coogler’s Sinners did reasonably well picking up the prize for the best screenplay and Wunmi Mosaku named the best supporting actress.

But that wasn’t the story of the night.

The seminal event of the 2026 BAFTAs took place when a Tourette syndrome campaigner — John Davidson — uttered the N-word when Delroy Lindo and Michael B. Jordan were presenting an award for video editing on stage.

Such is the nature of those afflicted by this neurological condition, that offensive words can come out of their mouths, involuntarily, causing great distress to those around them.

People know this about sufferers of Tourette, but what’s really extraordinary in all this, was the fact that the gatekeepers chose not to censor John Davidson and his bigoted words (There was a two-hour tape delay. This could have been omitted.), but took a harsher line on another winner, who mentioned Free Palestine, at the end of his speech.

[Ed Note: Show producers have since apologised claiming they were unable to hear the slur because they were editing in a truck. The BBC has stated that they will re-edit the show and remove the slur.]

Had Davidson said f*** Israel, from the river to the sea or had used anti-Semitic slurs, would the British Broadcasting Corporation have been much more generous in their assessment of his disability and allowed him to remain in the auditorium for the duration of the award ceremony?

For millions of Black people in the United Kingdom and across the Atlantic, what took place yesterday was another example of the extreme hypocrisy of the British establishment and its inability to act with clarity and good sense, when confronted with anti-Black racism.

Prince Harry recognized and understood this and called out the family to which he belonged and the entire political and broadcasting establishment for their racism.

This was precisely why he migrated to America.

Delroy Lindo, who incidentally was born in the UK, left for the states when he was a teenager and never looked back and has forged a highly successful career on film and stage in the last few decades.

It was Greg Dyke, the former director-general of the BBC, who used the term ‘hideously white’ to describe the organization nearly three decades ago and it is no surprise that nothing has changed in the intervening years.

The claim to objectivity is pointless, if it allows slurs to be used freely at Black folks and edits are allowed when Palestine is mentioned.

It goes to show that the BBC isn’t fit for purpose.