Jack Whitehall is once again embroiled in controversy after inadvertently broadcasting a student's phone number.
The comedian and co-panellist James Corden hit headlines last week for their appearance on Big Fat Quiz of the Year with their off-colour jokes about The Queen, Susan Boyle and Barack Obama, which resulted in a number of complaints to Ofcom after extensive press coverage.
The Daily Telegraph now reports that 27-year-old Rakesh Sagar has complained to Ofcom that his number was broadcast on the show, leading to his phone being bombarded with between 200 to 300 calls and texts. Sagar claims many of the calls were abusive and made in the middle of the night.
Whitehall had written the number down as the answer to a question, claiming it belonged to Jonathan Ross, before inviting viewers to "call him whenever you want".
Depite the number being blurred on screen viewers and extra digits being added to the end, Sagar was still inundated with calls. He said: "I didn't even bother going to work on Monday because I knew my phone wouldn't stop ringing and I couldn't switch it off because a relative is ill and I needed to be contactable.
"Ofcom said they would look into it and suggested I changed my number, but I paid a lot of money for it because it is a very easy number to remember so I'm not doing that. I'll just have to wait for things to die down."
A Channel 4 spokesman said: "An illegible and non-functional number which contained more digits than a standard mobile number was shown very briefly on the contestant's panel on Big Fat Quiz of the Year.
"Whilst it was obscured and only shown briefly, some viewers have attempted to guess the number and this appears to have led to calls being made to this phone. We have apologised and have further obscured the digits on repeats of the show."
In 2013 Whitehall will appear on Channel 4 in a third series of student comedy Fresh Meat, written by Peep Show scribes Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain.
