Granted, the death of Dame Joan Sutherland has inspired – quite properly – passionate tributes around the world. But Jeremy Paxman, one of the BBC’s pre-eminent newsreaders and host of their flagship television current affairs program Newsnight, has distinguished himself.

So furious was he at the fact that Newsnight wrongly billed a Sutherland excerpt on Monday night’s show, that he tore into both viewers (gently) and (not so gently) his producer on last night’s program. This is how he closed the show:-

“Last night we left you with the late Joan Sutherland’s last performance, from Die Fledermaus. Except it wasn’t, it was the brindisi from La Traviata. Thank you Mr Peter Freeman for your crowing e-mail putting us right. You were the only person out of a million viewers to notice, which is frankly [stern frown] very disappointing. Despite a university education, or alleged education, the producer responsible didn’t stop picking his nose, playing his video game, or even take his earphones out when the mistake was pointed out to him this afternoon. Here’s what he should have shown. Good night, and sorry.” Ouch.

You can see the entire program at the BBC iPlayer - jump to the end to see the Paxman moment.