Last updated at 07:46 25 April 2007

It was always going to be a tall order.

When a 5ft 6in BBC reporter was sent out to interview a German MP (6ft 4in in her high heels) the production team had difficulty getting them both into the shot.

But necessity is the mother of invention, and after Steve Rosenberg had hopped up on to an equipment box, he appeared to tower over Silvana Koch-Mehrin.

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Under normal circumstances, viewers would have been none the wiser over this very low-tech bit of technical wizardry.

But an alert passer-by saw the unlikely pair on Berlin's busy thoroughfare Unter den Linden and snapped a picture on his camera phone.

The image was published by Germany's biggest-selling daily newspaper, Bild, under the headline: 'Little Brit Questions Big Woman Politician'.

Their writer asked: 'Are men not allowed to be smaller than women on British TV?'

But BBC spokesman Paul Rasmussen said: "This was not a question of personal vanity. It was a technical necessity caused by camera angles."