More lies from the BBC....

Every time you think the BBC has sunk lower....

The BBC faced a grave crisis of public trust last night after admitting that a series of flagship children's and charity phone-in programmes had deliberately deceived viewers.

Children in Need, Comic Relief and Sport Relief all featured fake competition winners, the corporation said.

An internal investigation, ordered after the BBC's apology to the Queen last week, also disclosed serious breaches of editorial standards involving a series of other phone-in shows. In some instances production staff posed as competition winners.

After the scale of the deceptions became clear, Mark Thompson, the director-general, immediately suspended all phone-related competitions on television and radio. Interactive and online competitions were also halted.

The inquiry identified cheating on six television and radio programmes. The audit - of a million hours of output since January 2005 - followed the row over a BBC1 trailer that wrongly implied that the Queen stormed out of a sitting with the photographer Annie Leibovitz.

Mr Thompson presented the inquiry's findings at a meeting with the BBC Trust, the corporation's governing body, which had demanded an explanation over the royal fiasco.

The trust called the editorial breaches "deeply disappointing" and ordered an immediate investigation.

A number of executives face suspension over the deceptions. Mr Thompson last night warned that dismissals were inevitable.

The BBC has also decided not to commission any new programmes from RDF, the production company whose incorrectly edited trailer of the documentary about the Queen appeared to show her walking out of the Leibovitz photographic session in a "huff". The company has been dropped until the result of a separate inquiry into the misrepresentation of the Queen is completed in the autumn.

The six new cheating cases follow the £50,000 fine imposed on the BBC last week after Blue Peter faked a competition. The watchdog Ofcom criticised the programme for making a young studio visitor "complicit" in the deception by asking her to pose as a winner.