Then Terry Wogan announced at the Eurovision Song Contest nominations that Cyndi Almouzi had won the right to do badly on behalf of the UK, when really the winner was pop group Scooch.
On one level this might seem trivial, but again there remains the question of trust. There is a clear case for suspending the competition while an urgent review is conducted into whether this latest cock-up was the result of premium call-fixing, a dodgy earpiece or a senior moment by 68-year-old Wogan.
We probably won't have long to wait for the next telephone scandal, but until then, it is time to consider two quite serious scandals involving children and British broadcasting that have nothing to do with Blue Peter and haven't received nearly enough attention.
The more serious of the two is the strange affair of BBC Jam, or the BBC Digital Curriculum as it is still known to older viewers, and what it says about the Corporation's relationship with the private sector.
Once upon a time, there was a very talented BBC education programme department broadcasting to schools. Obviously it had to change and adapt to the internet age and the advent of broadband.
What is much less clear is whether the BBC had to entirely reinvent a digital curriculum producing education material that went head-to-head with private-sector educational publishers using £150m of licence-fee money.
Concessions were extracted. Half of the content had to be commissioned from outside the BBC. Commercial publishers still went to Brussels with their complaint that BBC Jam represented unfair competition and was not the 'distinctive' service promised.
In recent days, the result is clear to anyone logging on to BBC Jam. Following the intervention of the BBC Trust, the service was suspended from Tuesday 20 March. 'That means that you will no longer be able to access and use the resources on this site. Unfortunately this also means that any work you have saved or created will be lost, as will any playlists or groups you may have set up,' BBC Jam helpfully explains.
The BBC first announced it was working on a digital curriculum in January 2002. Since then, about £75m has been spent, while only about 10% of the planned content has been made available. As work begins on a successor, up to 190 jobs are in jeopardy. Whatever the BBC comes up with will be subject to new public interest tests from both the BBC Trust and Ofcom.
It is likely to be 2010 before such a service is fully operational - a full decade after the BBC promised to produce a revolutionary digital curriculum.
The scale of the scandal puts a fixed Blue Peter competition into a certain perspective.
The second under-reported scandal involves Michael Grade, executive chairman of ITV. He stood before the Media Select Committee and said: 'In terms of the valuable airtime on a main network such as ITV 1, maintaining a loss-leading service for children seems unlikely to be sustained in the medium- to long-term.'
The trouble is that nobody seems to have batted an eyelid at such an expression of low ambitions and even lower expectations.
With the BBC, it may be a case of jam tomorrow - but at least it is trying to do something of a vaguely educational nature.
30 SECONDS ON ... SCOOCH AND CYNDI
- Scooch will represent the UK at the Eurovision Song Contest, which takes place on 12 May in Helsinki, performing a song called Flying the Flag (For You).
- The band was formed in 1999. They went on to win a contest on the BBC's Saturday-morning TV show Live & Kicking, with the prize of having a single released. The resulting record, When My Baby, made the top 40.
- In 2000, they scored a top 10 hit with More Than I Needed to Know, before splitting later the same year.
- The foursome, who reformed in 2004, comprises Natalie Powers, Caroline Barnes, David Ducasse and Russ Spencer.
- Runner-up Cyndi is French, despite competing to represent the UK at the contest. Her full name is Cyndi Almouzni. She was inspired to sing by seeing Whitney Houston perform I Will Always Love You.