This is just hilarious:
The BBC has apologised after
putting a mystery man, possibly a taxi driver, on the air in a live
interview, mistaking him for a computer expert who was waiting at the
reception desk.
The man’s mouth opened in horror as
the camera cut to him in the British Broadcasting Corporation’s News-24
television studio, where he had been seated on a stool by a floor
manager, a microphone clipped to his lapel.
A
business presenter, sitting opposite, introduced the clearly startled
man as the editor of a technology website, and asked if he was
surprised by computer company Apple’s victory in a trademark dispute
over The Beatles’ Apple Corps.
“I’m very surprised
to see this verdict to come on me because I was not expecting that,” he
said, with a strong French accent, in broken
English.
“When I came they told me something else
and I’m coming … so a big surprise
anyway.”
He gamely
answered two more questions about music downloading, before the
presenter thanked him and moved on.
The BBC said it
still did not know who he was but newspapers reported he was thought to
be a taxi driver who happened to be at reception when a floor manager
came to fetch the guest.
The real website editor,
Guy Kewney, who watched with astonishment at reception, said the mixup
was hard to explain because BBC staff had seen his picture in
advance.
Mr Kewney is white and the mystery guest
was black.
“He seemed as baffled as I felt,” Mr
Kewney wrote on his website www.newswireless.net, which has a link to
the interview, broadcast live on Saturday.
Update: According to Kewney’s blog, the man was not a taxi driver at all, but rather a Business Studies graduate, from the Congo, in reception because he was applying for a high level IT job with the BBC.
