Commentators said they could hardly believe BBC World, the BBC's commercially funded international 24/7 news and information television channel serving 256 million homes in more than 200 countries, would fall for what the Corporation later called an "elaborate deception".

It was only after older and wiser heads within the BBC heard the interview and realized its full import that they started to question its veracity, sources said.

Even as it faces Dow Chemical's threat to launch a formal complaint against it, the BBC promised it was "looking into the incident to establish the background and how the interview got to air" and would be reporting back to its Deputy Director-General, Mark Byford.