Live and Dangerous

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Weather presenter Joanne Malin has hit the headlines for describing conditions in the way the rest of us do when, live on Central TV, she said it was "pissing it down". Far from being outraged, the public has leapt to her defence. "We got only two complaints," she says. "And I was amazed at the number of emails asking my editor not to be too hard on me as they hadn't laughed so much in years."

On-air cock-ups were once the province of sports presenters who, for many years, were the broadcast journalists most likely to be performing live and without scripts for long spells. Colemanballs, such as Brian Johnston's comment during a 1976 cricket Test that "the bowler's Holding, the batsman's Willey", or Harry Carpenter's remark (scroll down) after the 1977 boat race about the wife of the Cambridge president "kissing the cox of the Oxford crew", have passed into legend.

But the growth of 24-hour rolling news has thrown news presenters into the same boat. TV anchors can no longer depend on scripts to save them, and the result has been an explosion of cock-ups that can actually be measured.

Since Britain's long-running blooper show It'll be all right on the night premiered in 1977, Denis Norden has presented five episodes up to 1987, seven episodes from 1987 to 1997, and 11 since 1997 - a 120% increase. Conclusive, I'm sure you'll agree.

Nowadays, broadcast errors barely raise an eyebrow. We've had BBC News 24's Philip Hayton asking weather presenter Isobel Laing whether she was "warm and wet", Sir Trevor McDonald spoonerising the phrase "Kent countryside", Fox News presenter Shepard Smith talking about Jennifer Lopez getting a blow job from Bronx residents and US presenter Cynthia Azaguirre speculating on homosexuality as a handicap to mountaineering.

It's certainly not normally enough to run the risk of disciplinary action, although US radio host Dave Lenihan lost his job earlier this year when he made a racial insult during an item about Condoleezza Rice.

Some observers questioned whether that was entirely accidental, but it's probably best not to inquire too deeply unless you want to open what John Humphrys would call a real can of beans.
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"Sir Trevor McDonald spoonerising the phrase "Kent countryside" -