The saga of the BBC documentary is bizarre and pretty outrageous. Our national broadcaster produced the film yet it is claimed to be covered by Crown copyright. The BBC defends its impartial news reporting yet has allowed the subjects of a documentary to control access to it.

The video is removed by YouTube on the grounds of the BBC owning copyright, rather than the Crown.

The then royal press officer is quoted as saying "we put very heavy restrictions on it because we realised it was a huge shift in attitude".

David Attenborough – at the time, controller of BBC 2 – warned Cawston that his film was in danger of "killing the monarchy".

Attenborough is quoted saying: "The whole institution depends on mystique and the tribal chief in his hut. [...] If any member of the tribe ever sees inside the hut, then the whole system of the tribal chiefdom is damaged and the tribe eventually disintegrates." Patronising much?

It's claimed that 350 million people watched the documentary around the world. This is as unlikely as the claim 2bn people watched the Kate/William wedding in 2012.

In 1969 the world population was 3.6bn. Of that almost 2bn lived in Maoist China, communist Russia, Brazil or India, which either were unlikely to broadcast the documentary or simply didn't have a high level of TV ownership. Millions more lived in other communist states.

Lots of countries, including many Commonwealth countries had no TV network in 1969, including South Africa, Bahrain, Niger, Tanzania, Angola, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Mozambique, Nepal, Papua New Guinea and Botswana.

For 350 million to watch would have meant more than 20% of the remaining population watched a 90 minute documentary about the royal family. That's not credible when the best estimate for UK viewing figures is 50%.

We have a copy of the film and will review it. The Queen does make reference to one ambassador looking like a gorilla, although there's no indication of who that might have been or which country they were from.