BBC's The Choir branded misleading (From Hampshire Chronicle)

BBC's The Choir branded misleading

12:08am Tuesday 11th September 2012 in National Entertainment News © Press Association 2013

Gareth Malone's new TV series has been branded "misleading" and "mendacious" by a singer featured in one of his choirs.

BBC Two series The Choir: Sing While You Work features groups singing in the workplace.

Edmund Chaloner, a 48-year-old general surgery consultant at Lewisham hospital in south-east London, told the Radio Times magazine that the show is "dishonest".

He said: "If you could have deleted the television bit, I'd have enjoyed it twice as much. I thought the television was a pain in the a**e. The programme-makers knew exactly how they were going to play this.

"They'd put different people in different stereotypes in order to display how we all come together in an example of wonderful musicianship. They would play on me being a surgeon, pretending that I'm some sort of Lancelot Spratt-type character. And I find that ... I think it's dishonest, actually.

"I think it's mendacious. I think it's misleading. It will purport to show reality but it's not reality at all I'm afraid.

"I found the whole TV thing a nuisance and if I was asked to do it again, in retrospect I would refuse because of that; not because of the music ... that was sensational. I didn't realise we could make a sound like that, that I could make a sound like that."

Meanwhile, Military Wives star Gareth told the magazine that he would have to show a different side to his personality when he goes to the US to film a show there.

"You have to speak their language. The slightly cynical, embarrassed English approach doesn't wash in America," he said.

"They don't understand why you're not blowing your own trumpet. I can be bold there, whereas I have to slightly tip-toe around the British."