When to err is so gloriously human (From York Press)

When to err is so gloriously human

9:10am Monday 23rd August 2010 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
• Comments(0)

DON’T you just love it when broadcasters foul up on the telly or radio?

When smoothly professional presenters get their tongues in a twist or blurt out some inappropriate comment that gets the suits upstairs wringing their hands in angst and reaching for their well-thumbed manual of political correctness?

They might not like it, but the viewers and listeners do. It quite brightens up their day.

The latest to fall foul is BBC weatherman Tomasz Schafernaker, who gave “the finger” to a fellow presenter who had made an on-air joke about his 100 per cent accurate forecasts.

Only trouble was it was caught on camera, much to the chagrin of Polish-born Tomasz and the glee of thousands of viewers. Bet that’s pushed his popularity ratings through the roof.

Tomasz is no stranger to on-air foul ups. In June last year he got a fit of the giggles when in a radio forecast he inadvertently made reference to the Glastonbury festival’s “muddy site” that included a rogue letter h in the second word. Then two years previously he had another “whoops!” moment when he called the Western Islands and west Highlands “nowheresville”. That incurred the wrath of the po-faced SNP, but if you live in the middle of York, Leeds, Manchester or London, it probably is.

He’s not the only one on the Beeb to go into meltdown on air. Radio 4 newsreader Charlotte Green, whose dulcet tones epitomise the station’s establishment sobriety famously “corpsed” during the Today programme’s premier 8am news bulletin when she was hit by an unbidden attack of the giggles while reading an obituary report.

She had been set off by a newly discovered voice recording from 1860 which sounded like a bee trapped in a jar, according to a wickedly mischievous colleague, and while the dead man’s family probably weren’t laughing it was a deliciously contagious hysteria moment – you know, that unstoppable, breathless instant when you completely lose the plot in the most inappropriate of circumstances resulting in you feeling wrung out with exhaustion afterwards.

Such broadcast moments represent a momentary turning of the world upside down, a bid for freedom in an otherwise sterile studio world. And there are so many examples that offer light relief and a hint of naughtiness to delight or maybe shock the viewer or listener.

I hope it’s the former more often than not, though, because I do get somewhat irritated at the pious indignation that gets trotted out at the slightest perceived insult or opposing standpoint.

Though I suspect that Canadian Juliana Thiessen Day might have been a bit peeved when during television coverage of a federal election in 2000, a CBS television producer covering her father-in-law’s campaign was heard on air making gratuitous comments about her breasts. He was cut-off mid sentence and no wonder: “This is Logan Day’s wife,” he intoned. “I’ve never met her but apparently she’s got t—s that’d stop a ….”

And it’s not just broadcast professionals who fall over the trip wire. Who, if they are of an age to do so, can forget at the height of the Cold War blunderbuss US president Ronald Reagan saying as a radio interview sound check: “My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”

Talk yourself out of that one Ronnie… Then there was the gaffe by the then Prime Minister, John Major who forgot about the recording equipment after an interview with ITN. He called members of his Cabinet by an old-fashioned name for being born out of wedlock, promised to “crucify” them and said of recent revelations: “I can’t stop people sleeping with other people if they ought not to.” And in a very insightful moment he called himself a wimp and said he had no idea how to win an election. Well, he was right about that one.

And for the sake of political balance, there was also Gordon Brown’s mammoth faux pas in this year’s election campaign. He still had his mic on when he called a voter a “bigoted woman” and said his encounter with her was a “disaster”. Indeed it was. For him.

But it’s when the broadcasters foul up that I love it best. A politician getting it wrong only serves to provide a piranha-like opportunity for the opposition to go for the jugular.

No, mishaps experienced by the likes of Tomasz and Charlotte provide a grinning recognition of human frailty, as well as raising a Tomasz-like middle finger to po-faced convention. And I’m all for that.