Are We Live?

by Marion Appleby

  Jeremy Paxman on BBC Two’s Newsnight, January 2011

  ‘The roads and bridges are closed and trains in and out of the c**t …county have been cancelled.’

  A Sky News presenter reporting on flooding in Cornwall

  ‘We’ve got a weather c**t, er, front coming down from Scotland.’

  BBC weather presenter John Hammond

  URBAN LEGENDS

  The myths of live broadcast debunked

  Although David Letterman’s sidekick, band-leader Paul Shaffer, was thought to have been the first person to say ‘fuck’ on American television, it was in fact Grace Slick of rock group Jefferson Airplane.

  The incident happened during the band’s performance of ‘We Can Be Together’ on The Dick Cavett Show on 19 August 1969, the day after the legendary Woodstock concert. Slick refused to change the lyric ‘Up against the wall, motherfucker’. In fact, she muttered the f-bomb twice during the performance.

  Asking for it

  If you’re going to include a discussion on The Vagina Monologues on a live broadcast there’s a fair chance the c-bomb might be dropped.

  Jane Fonda: It wasn’t that I wasn’t a big fan. I hadn’t seen the play, I live in Georgia …I was asked to do a monologue called ‘C**t’ …I said, I don’t think so, I’ve got enough problems.

  The Today Show, NBC, May 2008

  ‘If it weren’t for Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of television, we’d still be eating frozen radio dinners.’

  COMEDIAN JOHNNY CARSON

  Serial offender

  While discussing the thorny issue of fox hunting in April 2010, Radio 5 Live Breakfast Show host Nicky Campbell let one too many slip …

  Nicky Campbell: Tim Bono from the Countryside Alliance – an organization which is, of course, pro-c**ting …er …hunting. Have you ever known a law so openly broken?

  [Later in the show …]

  Nicky Campbell: Georgie Worsley is master of the Old Surrey and Burstow and West C**t, Kent! Er, Hunt and is out hunting this morning in Lingfield in Surrey. Good morning.

  Guest: Good morning to you. That was a bit of a slip of the tongue there!

  Nicky Campbell: I know, I do apologize for that. It’s very early in the morning and these things do happen and I do feel exceptionally embarrassed about it.

  [Later still …]

  Nicky Campbell: Lots of you are mentioning that they’ll still be talking about the c**t, that, er, the West Kent Hunt that shall not be mentioned in five hundred years’ time.

  URBAN LEGENDS

  The myths of live broadcast debunked

  In July 1985, Sir Bob Geldof was thought to have said ‘give us your fucking money’ on live television as part of his fundraising efforts during the Live Aid broadcast.

  However, Geldof actually said: ‘Fuck the address, let’s give the numbers’ after the show’s presenter asked Geldof to read out the address viewers could send their donations. According to reports, the public increased their donations significantly after Geldof’s outburst, reaching a rate of £300 per second.

  NAUGHTY, NAUGHTY

  Behold! An impressive gathering of rebellious pop stars who’ve dared to utter swear words on live TV:

  Hip-hop artist M.I.A. flipped up her middle finger during the Superbowl telecast in February 2012.

  Ageing material girl Madonna shouted ‘Come on, motherfuckers! Jump!’ during the Live Earth broadcast in summer 2007.

  Not to be outdone, Johnny Borrell of Razorlight fame dared to utter ‘fuck’ during the same Live Earth broadcast.

  Serial award-winner Adele ‘flipped the bird’ (i.e. her middle finger) after accepting an award at 2012’s BRIT Awards. Her speech was cut very short, which she clearly wasn’t very happy about.

  Jumping on the Live Earth swear-a-thon bandwagon, eighties legend Phil Collins also said ‘fuck’ while performing on stage.

  Very naughtie

  In December 2010, James Naughtie, veteran presenter of BBC Radio 4’s very serious flagship breakfast show, the Today programme, came a cropper with Jeremy Hunt, the Culture Secretary. He lost the plot and it’s a joy to hear.

  James Naughtie: First up, after the news we’re going to be talking to Jeremy C**t, er, Hunt, the culture secretary about [COUGH, suppressed giggle] broad …band. It’s eight o’clock on Monday the sixth of December. [More suppressed giggles, coughs unconvincingly.] Er, sorry, terrible coughing fit.

  [Later on in the show a helpful listener and psychology expert came to Naughtie’s rescue …]

  Evan Davis [co-host]: The prominent speech error in today’s programme was more the Prime Minister’s fault than Jim’s, he says. ‘It’s well known in psycho-linguistic research that two words that share a vowel are prone to a speech error, in which initial consonants are exchanged. For this reason, making Jeremy Hunt the Culture Secretary was reckless in the extreme. Jim can be reassured, as can the listeners, that the underlying theory has far more explanatory value than Freud’s theory of parapraxis, or Freudian Slips.’

  Later that morning, on Andrew Marr’s Radio 4 Start the Week programme:

  Guest: We heard this morning one of the primary examples of the Freudian slip that we’re ever likely to hear on Radio 4.

  Andrew Marr: … which we’re not going to repeat …Jeremy C**t, the, er, Hunt, the Culture Secretary had his name Freudianally transposed, er, as I’ve just done now …

  ‘If everyone demanded peace, instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.’

  JOHN LENNON

  NIGHTMARE GUESTS

  SACK THE CELEBRITY BOOKER

  Television presenters don’t always have it easy, especially when they’re faced with a nightmare guest. Be it confronted with a prickly Hollywood starlet or an amorous puppet, at times like these the poor presenters have only one mantra: the show must go on!

  Michael Parkinson: Where Angels Fear to Tread

  Unafraid to ask awkward questions, the veteran broadcaster and journalist has managed to rile a few notable celebrities over the years.

  Parkinson vs Meg Ryan

  In October 2003, in one of TV land’s most uncomfortable interviews, Parkinson, on his eponymous ITV chat show, conducted a fifteen-minute conversation of supreme awkwardness with Hollywood superstar Meg Ryan.

  In a frosty exchange with a monosyllabic Ryan, Parkinson tried to probe the movie star about her comment that acting wasn’t really in her nature, but she just wouldn’t be drawn. Parkinson confronted Ryan about her wariness towards journalists – and to him in particular – before finding out she actually studied to be one prior to becoming an actor. Parky then asked her what she would do in his position as the conductor of the world’s most awkward interview. Her response? ‘Just wrap it up.’ Which Parky duly did.

  Ryan later said of Parkinson, ‘I don’t even know the man. That guy was like some disapproving father! It’s crazy …he’s a nut.’ Meanwhile, Parkinson called the interview with Ryan his ‘most difficult moment’, adding, ‘I should have closed it …She was an unhappy woman. I felt sorry for her. What I couldn’t forgive her for was that she was rude to the other guests.’

  Parkinson vs Helen Mirren

  The grand dame of British acting talent, Helen Mirren, is as charming onscreen as she is off it. But early on in her career, a rather prickly Mirren took offence at Michael Parkinson’s line of questioning during an interview on BBC1 in 1975.

  Proceedings got off to a shaky start when Parky introduced Mirren using press quotes that variously described her as ‘the sex queen of the Royal Shakespeare Company’ and ‘especially telling at projecting sluttish eroticism’ – neither of which appeared to endear Mirren to him.

  She then misunderstood him when he called her ‘a serious actress’ using air quotes (Mirren: ‘In quotes? What do you mean, in quotes?’), and refused to play ball when he spent most of the interview trying to talk to her about her equipment (i.e. body), whereupon she (perhaps, understandably) came over a bit coy.

  Parkinso
n vs Emu

  This time it was Parkinson himself who got a bit riled. While interviewing popular entertainer Rod Hull and his puppet Emu on BBC 1 in 1976, poor Parky was faced with an overexcited bird …

  In an encounter of increasing aggression, the puppet tried to overrule the poor presenter. After flooring Parky and throwing away one of his shoes, the bird then nipped the presenter on the arse. Parky finished the piece with, ‘I knew I should never have booked you!’

  Bird Brain

  Parky wasn’t the only celeb to face the relentlessly prodding beak of the puppet Emu.

  Not in the script

  In 1983, on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Emu tossed aside host John Stapleton and co-host Nick Owen’s script, with pages flying all over the set. Emu could then be seen repeatedly nipping Owen’s bottom for the entirety of the show’s closing credits.

  ‘I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can stop eating peanuts.’

  ORSON WELLES

  Brush with death

  In 1981, on BBC 1’s Lena Zavaroni and Music, the show’s eponymous – and clearly terrified – star was forced to front a segment in which Rod Hull promised to demonstrate how to clean a pet bird with a brush. After asking Zavaroni to help scrub Emu’s feet, Hull spent the majority of his appearance attempting to pin down the bird shouting, ‘I’ve got him! Scrub his feet!’ Alas, it was all a ruse, allowing Emu to grab the brush and clean Zavaroni’s head with it.

  Bad dog

  In the 1990s, on Channel 4’s hip TV show The Word, Emu took a special shine to the US gangster rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg. The hip-hop star patted the bird’s head politely at first, but all hell broke loose when host Mark Lamarr produced his own (rather mean and considerably larger puppet) and began to attack another guest. Amidst the chaos, Snoop could be seen pushing Emu away, before trying to rip his head off. Lamarr then asked Snoop, ‘Do you have anything like this on TV shows in America?’ Snoop said absolutely nothing.

  Who Let Them On?

  The annals of television are packed full of irate presenters and slightly mad guests …

  Speak up!

  In 1983, on Channel 4’s Loose Talk, in what’s reported to be his first appearance on television, Private Eye editor Ian Hislop managed to clash with no less a figure than rock’s most famous, gravelly voiced troubadour, Tom Waits. The problem was, Hislop didn’t think Tom was talking loud enough.

  Hislop later said of his first foray into television interviewing: ‘I had to talk to a man called Tom Waits, who had flown in and had what was called “jet lag” – as celebrities call it. I think he’d put a huge amount of jet lag up his nose.’

  Here’s how the awkward exchange went down:

  Tom Waits [haltingly, and very quietly]: Part of the reason I’m here is that I have a new piece of work that’s out …

  [An uncomfortable silence.]

  Ian Hislop: Can I suggest you plug it a bit louder? I mean, if that’s what you’re over here for.

  Waits: I’ll plug it my own damn way, you know?

  Hislop: It’s just very soft.

  Waits: Well, I think you can hear me, can’t you?

  Hislop: Yeah, but I’m fairly near.

  [At this point, Hislop simply turned in his seat and looked, baffled, at the three other guests – all three of whom failed to rescue him.]

  ‘Television is not real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.’

  BILL GATES

  The Cruisenator

  In what would turn out to be one of his most explosive appearances ever (and that includes his performance on Oprah’s sofa), Tom Cruise was invited to talk to Matt Lauer on NBC’s Today Show in 2005 about psychiatry and anti-depressants.

  Overusing the host’s name (his sentences were punctuated by a chorus of ‘Matt, Matt, Matt’), Cruise waxed lyrical about his thoughts on actress Brooke Shields’s choice to take antidepressants to treat post-natal depression. His comments included the following crackers:

  I’ve never agreed with psychiatry …It’s a pseudoscience.

  Do you know now that Ritalin is a street drug? Do you understand that?

  You don’t know the history of psychiatry. I do.

  There is no such thing as a chemical imbalance.

  [To the host] You’re glib. You don’t even know what Ritalin is.

  Stick to making films, Tom!

  Keep going …

  In December 1976, the Sex Pistols made a now infamous appearance on Bill Grundy’s magazine show. And what a strange beast it was – as belligerent as the Pistols’ behaviour was, it’s hard not to feel more blame lies with veteran broadcaster Bill Grundy. He wanted them to drop the f-bomb; he seemed to goad them.

  Grundy: Now I want to know, are you serious about what you’re doing?

  Glen Matlock [bassist]: Oh, yeah.

  Grundy: Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Brahms …

  Johnny Rotten [singer]: They’re all heroes of ours, ain’t they? [sarcastically] They’re wonderful people. They really turn us on.

  Grundy: Well suppose they turn other people on?

  Rotten [quietly]: That’s just their tough shit.

  Grundy: It’s what?

  Rotten: Nothing. A rude word. Next question.

  Grundy: No, no, what was the rude word?

  Rotten: Shit.

  Grundy: Was it really? Good heavens, you frighten me to death. What about you girls, behind?

  Matlock: He’s like your dad, ain’t he, this geezer? …Or your grandad.

  Grundy [to Siouxsie Sioux]: Are you worried, or are you just enjoying yourself?

  Siouxsie Sioux: Enjoying myself …I’ve always wanted to meet you.

  Grundy: We’ll meet afterwards, shall we?

  Steve Jones [guitarist]: You dirty sod. You dirty old man!

  Grundy: Well keep going, chief, keep going. Go on, you’ve got another five seconds. Say something outrageous.

  Jones: You dirty bastard!

  Grundy: Go on, again.

  Jones: You dirty fucker!

  Grundy: What a clever boy!

  Jones: What a fucking rotter.

  The wrong guest

  Poor Guy Goma. All he did on 8 May 2006 was turn up on time to a job interview at BBC Television Centre. The last thing the IT specialist expected was to be picked up mistakenly from reception by a member of the BBC News 24 production team, who should have in fact collected Guy Kewney, a respected technology journalist who was due to talk on air about online music piracy. Guy Goma duly appeared on screen, and, ever the sport, ably mucked in and tried to answer anchor Karen Bowerman’s questions, even though they’d, quite literally, got the wrong Guy.

  Bowerman: Well, Guy Kewney is editor of the technology website News Wireless. [Camera flashes to Guy, whose face wears a look of confusion and horror.] Hello, good morning to you.

  Goma: Uh, good morning?

  Bowerman: Were you surprised by this verdict today?

  Goma: I am very surprised to see this verdict because I was not expecting that. When I came, they told me, ‘You’ve got an interview’ and that’s all. So it’s a big surprise.

  Bowerman: With regards to the costs involved, do you think now more people will be downloading online?

  Goma: Actually, you’re going to see a lot of people downloading from the Internet. But I think it is much better for the development to inform people what they want.

  Bowerman: This does really seem to be the way the music industry’s progressing now, that people want to go onto the website and download music.

  Goma: Exactly. It is going to be an easy way for everyone to get something from the Internet.

  Bowerman: Guy Kewney, thanks very much indeed.

  In your face!

  In 2007, while being interviewed in the player tunnel after a victorious match against West Bromwich Albion, Stephen Bywater – serial-TV-prankster (he once spelled out the c-word on live TV) and former goal-keeper for Derby County – was attacked from all
angles by his fellow players.

  Heroically maintaining his decorum as he responded to the interviewer’s questions, Stephen was targeted with a series of pranks, including having his shirt pulled over his head, his hair ruffled, a kiss planted on his cheek, hands in his face, and, finally, talcum powder rubbed into his face.

  Best of Friends

  People – presenters and guests included – should of course be on their best behaviour when appearing on live TV. But it seems the bright lights and certain tensions bubbling under the surface can sometimes lead to explosive on-screen encounters …

  Brace yourself …

  In 1982, comedian Andy Kaufman and wrestler Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler’s appearance on Late Night with David Letterman ended in tears. Specifically Kaufman’s. Kaufman was asked by Letterman if the public feud between the two men was genuine, after they had fought a wrestling bout that appeared to have left Kaufman in a neck brace – which he was still sporting.