The BBC has apologised to the former Aston Villa chairman Sir Doug Ellis after a subtitler mistakenly linked him with Hezbollah.

Ellis, who sold his stake in Villa to Randy Lerner in 2006 and is now the life president of the club, was spotted in the crowd at Goodison Park before the 4-0 defeat to Everton on 21 November.

“Great to see Doug Ellis here in his Villa scarf,” said the Match of the Day commentator Steve Wilson. However, those words were somehow misinterpreted by the subtitler and the sentence, “Great to see Doug Ellis here with Hezbollah” appeared on screen.

The mistake was picked up by Gary Stark of Kettering, who wrote a letter to the Radio Times to highlight the gaffe and ended it with the sentence: “Let’s hope he doesn’t sue!”

“Match of the Day is a live programme and to subtitle it we used a method known as ‘live respeaking’,” read a response from a BBC spokesperson. “The voice recognition technology misrecognised the word ‘Villa’ leading to the error. We apologise for any offence caused and are working hard to make subtitles as accurate as they can be.”

Hezbollah is a Shia Muslim group and political party based in Lebanon.