Here's the quote from the BBC article:

>On Friday, Lindstrand dropped a
>simulation weight from 90 metres (300 >feet) with the Mars chute attached. He
>told the BBC he was very pleased with
>the outcome of the test.

The Mars Exploration Rover will deploy its parachute at about

Mach = 1.7 (supersonic)
Velocity = 411 meters/sec
Altitude = 7.2 kilometers
Free stream pressure = 3.44e+02 Pascals
Free stream density = 7.89e-03 kg/m^3

A sucessful parachute deployment for Beagle-2 would be in the same ball park.

The Earth's atmosphere (US-1976 model) at 90 meters is:

pressure = 1.002e+05 Pascals
density = 1.214e+00 kg/meter^3

The parachute drop test pressure is wrong by about 3 orders of magnitutde and the density wrong by about two orders of magnitude. The Mach number for the test would have been low subsonic instead of supersonic.

Nick has correctly commented that this is a publicity stunt. Reading between the lines, the people running Beagle-2 have run out of money and time. They can not do a proper validation test or a major redesign if the test did not work out. They are probably worried that Beagle-2 might get pulled from Mars Express because it is technically unsound.
Gary