Are We Live? (9 page)

Clocking the global trend for light-hearted news stories about cute animals, Saxony Zoo knew it was on to a good thing when it discovered Til, a bunny rabbit born without ears. A press conference was duly called in February 2012, but the rabbit’s time in the spotlight was brief to say the least. During filming a cameraman took a wrong footing and stepped on the bunny, killing it instantly.

Those television professionals can be a cheeky, childish bunch, as these tales will attest.

A Russian news anchor raised her middle finger at President Obama when she thought the cameras weren’t on her.

After reading out the US President’s name during a news piece, loose-fingered Tatyana Limanova flipped up her middle finger in full view of the camera. Although she tried to claim her gesture had simply been ‘a signal’ to the autocue, the award-winning senior journalist was fired shortly after the incident.

BBC News
presenters are sometimes so bored by their programmes they fall asleep at their fancy news desk.

In March 2012, cameras panned onto fifty-year-old BBC
Breakfast
news presenter Simon McCoy when he had his head on the desk, apparently snoozing. Although McCoy later denied everything to his Twitter followers, saying, ‘I was not asleep!’, his co-host tweeted, ‘Intravenous caffeine now being administered to @simonmccoy.’

When he worked for Irish national network RTÉ, veteran broadcaster Terry Wogan used to burn his co-hosts’ scripts while they were live on air.

Wogan admitted to it on the BBC’s
Would I Lie to You?
, revealing that much of his early career involved quite a bit of pranking.

Author, broadcaster, journalist, angry man: Jeremy Paxman tells it like it is.

‘Good evening. If the autocue was working I could now read you something. But as it isn’t, I can’t.’

Jeremy Paxman, during the opening of BBC Two’s
Newsnight

‘I’ll be here again tomorrow night, when it would be jolly nice if you could sit up and pay attention.’

Jeremy Paxman, at the close of
Newsnight
in 2008

‘… To tomorrow’s weather forecast. It’s a veritable smorgasbord! Sun! Rain! Thunder! Hail! Snow! Cold winds! It’s almost worth going to work.’

Jeremy Paxman: sometime weather presenter

Getting up Tony’s nose:

Paxman:
  Does the fact that George Bush and you are both Christians make it easier for you to view these conflicts in terms of good and evil?

Blair:
  I don’t think so, no. I think that whether you’re a Christian or not a Christian, you can try and perceive what is good and what is evil.

Paxman:
  You don’t pray together, for example?

Blair:
  [Exasperated.] No, we don’t pray together, Jeremy. No.

Newsnight
, BBC Two

Closing the show in the way only he knows how:

‘That’s all from
Newsnight
tonight. Martha’s [Kearney] being punished for some offence in a previous life by presenting tomorrow’s programme. In the meantime, it’s all available again on our website, along with our editor’s pathetic pleas for you to send some of us your old bits of home movie and the like so we can become the BBC’s version of
Animal’s Do the Funniest Things
. Good night.’

Newsnight
, BBC Two

Still
getting up Tony’s nose:

Blair:
  These are people who own the
Express
newspapers?

Paxman:
  Yes.

Blair:
  Right, well, in that case and in my view, it’s perfectly acceptable for us to take a donation from them.

Paxman:
  They also own
Horny Housewives
,
Megaboobs
,
Posh Wives
and
Skinny and Wriggly
. Do you know what these magazines are like?

Blair:
  No.

Newsnight
, BBC Two