The BBC made a second documentary series fronted by the presenter Ashley Cain just months after it was informed about an incident of alleged misconduct on a separate production in Las Vegas, which caused filming to be suspended and another presenter flown out at short notice to replace him.
The BBC’s decision to hire Cain, and promote him as a rare talent who could appeal to young men, is under scrutiny after the Guardian revealed his history of highly offensive and misogynistic social media posts, including jokes about hitting women and degrading sexual practices.
A former professional footballer and MTV reality TV star, Cain had also been publicly accused by a woman of uploading footage of them having sex to Snapchat without her consent – which he denied – before the BBC hired him to present season one of Ashley Cain: Into the Danger Zone, which was first broadcast on BBC Three on 1 April 2025.
Months later, Cain flew to the US to present another BBC production, Sin City: The Real Las Vegas. Filming took place in Las Vegas in June 2025.
On 9 June last year, Cain posted on Instagram to say he was scheduled to “head to Las Vegas this week to film another documentary series”, and posted a video of himself leaving for the airport on 10 June. “Another documentary series pending … see you on the other side,” he wrote.
Multiple sources familiar with the production allege it had to be temporarily suspended after Cain appeared to be drunk during filming on 12 June. Sources said a decision was made to halt filming, before Cain was scheduled to meet vulnerable contributors, including representatives from a sex trafficking charity and a sex worker.
The following day, a BBC commissioner is understood to have been made aware of the concerns raised by the crew on the production. The broadcaster then requested it to be suspended. Cain’s agent was also notified. Statements were subsequently collected from crew members. It is understood those statements were shared with the BBC.
Cain returned to the UK – in effect being pulled from the production – and another presenter, Tir Dhondy, flew out on 14 June to replace him.
By then two interviews had already been filmed with Cain. One, with a gambling addiction survivor, Rob Minnick, was included in the final cut of the programme but edited to remove footage of Cain asking the questions.
Cain did not respond to multiple requests for comment. A BBC spokesperson said: “We are very clear we expect the highest standards of behaviour from everyone who works with or for the BBC. When allegations are brought to our attention we take them seriously. We will consider this information carefully and do not intend to comment further at this stage.”
A source at the BBC said the corporation had been unaware of Cain’s social media posts and had now asked the production companies that hired him to review what checks were undertaken at the time.
The allegations about Cain’s conduct on Sin City: The Real Las Vegas were made two months after the BBC chair, Samir Shah, promised to draw a “line in the sand” concerning unacceptable behaviour from on-screen talent, after an external review of BBC culture and practices.
In the speech, delivered at Broadcasting House on 28 April 2025, Shah responded to a wave of scandals involving prominent BBC presenters, such as the newsreader Huw Edwards and and the MasterChef host Gregg Wallace.
“Frankly, I know it’s not easy to deal with such behaviour [when it] surfaces in the middle of a recording,” said Shah, telling staff he had “an absolute determination to take decisive action and rid the BBC of these behaviours for good.”
Despite the incident in Las Vegas in June 2025, the BBC chose to broadcast a second season 2 of Into the Danger Zone. It is unclear when exactly the second series was commissioned, but production appears to have commenced around November 2025 – six months after the Las Vegas incident.
Last week Cain posted on his Instagram suggesting the second series of his show would be broadcast by the BBC in July. The post has since been deleted. A BBC source said no release date has been announced for the series, which was filmed on location in early 2026.
Details of the Las Vegas incident will add to the growing questions over the BBC’s decision to promote Cain, who executives previously said had an “exceptional” ability to connect with young men and was “what BBC Three is about”. Cain also appeared on the BBC last year as a contestant on Celebrity MasterChef.
Allegations from 2015 that Cain posted footage of a woman he had sex with to Snapchat – which he denied – would have been easily discoverable to BBC vetting staff looking into his background. So too would historical tweets in which he used extremely offensive language toward women, whom he called “slags”, “sluts”, “psychos” and “bitches”.
On Wednesday, following the Guardian’s reporting, two Liberal Democrat MPs, Anna Sabine and Marie Goldman, wrote to the BBC director general, Matt Brittin, urging him to launch an immediate investigation into how Cain was hired by the BBC, and to urgently overhaul vetting processes. “This situation represents a catastrophic failure of the BBC’s vetting procedures,” they wrote, asking: “How did Mr Cain slip through the net?”
The production company Middlechild, which made Sin City: The Real Las Vegas, declined to comment. True North, which produced Ashley Cain: Into the Danger Zone, and Shine TV, the company that makes Celebrity MasterChef, did not respond to requests for comment.
