'I think it's mendacious. I think it's misleading,' says medic in BBC2's The Choir: Sing While You Work

Military Wives star Gareth Malone's new TV series has been branded "misleading" and "mendacious" by a singer featured in one of his choirs.

BBC2 series The Choir: Sing While You Work features groups singing in the workplace.

Edmund Chaloner, a 48-year-old general surgery consultant at Lewisham hospital in south-east London, told the Radio Times magazine that the show is "dishonest".

He said: "If you could have deleted the television bit, I'd have enjoyed it twice as much. I thought the television was a pain in the arse.

"The programme-makers knew exactly how they were going to play this.

"They'd put different people in different stereotypes in order to display how we all come together in an example of wonderful musicianship.

"They would play on me being a surgeon, pretending that I'm some sort of Lancelot Spratt-type character. And I find that ... I think it's dishonest, actually.

"I think it's mendacious. I think it's misleading. It will purport to show reality but it's not reality at all I'm afraid.

"I found the whole TV thing a nuisance and if I was asked to do it again, in retrospect I would refuse because of that; not because of the music ... that was sensational. I didn't realise we could make a sound like that, that I could make a sound like that."

Elem Nnachi, a staff nurse, told the magazine: "One of the best things about the choir was that it brought together different people from different parts of the NHS."

The show also features choirs in Manchester Airport, the Royal Mail in Bristol and Severn Trent Water.

Meanwhile, Malone told the magazine that he would have to show a different side to his personality when he goes to the US to film a show there.

"You have to speak their language. The slightly cynical, embarrassed English approach doesn't wash in America," he said.

"They don't understand why you're not blowing your own trumpet. I can be bold there, whereas I have to slightly tip-toe around the British."

A spokeswoman for Twenty Productions Limited, the production company behind The Choir, said: "The Choir: Sing While You Work sets out to create four unique choirs in different organisations which will then sing head to head in a contest to find Gareth Malone's best workplace choir.

"It is not uncommon for contributors to feel worried about the way they come across on screen before a programme transmits. Eddie Chaloner has not yet seen the episode in which he appears."