h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Mine is from snooker..
"For those of you watching in black and white..the pink ball is next to the blue ball"

Emmily

When Ulrikakakakakaka got over excited and she fell out on Shooting Stars.

Oh...you mean... riiight. Well that one serves doubly so

Liam.

A TV reporter walks up to a man in a park and says:
"If I told you there was a high rating of low level ozone in this area would you know what I meant?"
The guy keeps a straight face and says:
"Yes, I'm a particle physicist"

When a presenter was announcing the next programme, a crime drama of some kind. She was supposed to say, "The only clue is a hypodermic needle." It came out as, "The only clue is a hooperdeemic nurdle." Just thinking about it made me laugh so much just now that I couldn't type.

I've tried to use the memory to reduce my fear of hypodermics, but it doesn't work!

I remember one from TV a few years ago (I think on the BBC) when a continuity announcer was supposed to mention a programme's webpage. He was plainly unaquainted with the ol' "internet talk" and his announcement went something like this "And you can find out more on our internot wibsite W.W.W. at Co errr..." at which point the kind technicians simply cut him off.

My favourite is from an old black-and-white American religious kids' programme. The 60-something presenter bent down to speak to a little black girl and asked her to tell him her favourite parable. After she went through the story of Jesus turning the water into wine, he asked her what the moral of the story was. She thought about it for a bit and then said, very confidently:

"When you run out of wine, get on your knees and pray!"

Must've been a young Whoopi Goldberg, with wit like that!

(BTW, I've tried it, and sadly it doesn't work )

Hmmm...it's a toss up between anonymous caller telling five star they were s**t and the QVC caller....definately QVC

Back in 95/96 one of the women presenters was talking all about some lovely gold jewellry, about half way through the started taking calls...one of them was a bloke who talked about how he'd bought the jewellry in question for his wife who had appreciated it. As the call was coming to an end this bloke came out with "Nice s love"...the look on the womans face was classic - and she had to carry on talking about the jewellry for another 10 minutes

maybe you had to be there

One of the old classics is still my favourite.

Brian Johnstone the English cricket commentator came out with the following while giving the names of two of the players during a match.

"The batsman's Holding the bowler's Willy"

I think this was one of the Aussie Open commentating bits after Capriati had just won something a few years back... but it went like:

"Well, ball size shouldn't really matter, but the men's balls are bigger than the women's."



Caper Plip

Not really a boob, but made me laugh.

Last year, reporting on the, largely peaceful May Day Demos (remember 2001 was a riot) the news reporter said (more or less)

"It is calm at the moment, but police fear that spontaneous riots are planned for later this afternoon"




and on the strict sense - Simon Groom on Blue Peter, admiring the original and replica door furniture from some cathedral

"Mmmm what a lovelly pair of knockers" as a young boy watching at tea time with the family I was shocked



CH

This may well be apocryphal and probably libellous, but what the hell...

I have heard it said that a certain Sports TV presenter (who did not remain with the station much longer thereafter) (shall we say he had a moustache and he wasn't Des and it wasn't the BBC) when doing a link, was supposed to say "and now over to the Cup Soccer". It didn't come out quite right - a not-quite-spoonerism.

[Regarding the bloke in the park and the ozone question - the park in question was Hyde Park, and the bloke in question was from Imperial College - the science college across the road...

So when the Queens Lawn gets rather crowded, it's up-sticks to Hyde Park ]

My fave one has to be the Blue Peter one with the rampaging elephant

A golf commentator talking about Nick Faldo's employment of his caddy, whose name was Fanny;

"Some weeks Nick likes to use Fanny, other weeks he likes to do it by himself."

..which reminds me of the departing quote from the end of an episode of the old TV cookery show:
"...and may your doughnuts all turn out like Fanny's"

Never shown on TV, but often does the round at conventions- Tom Baker showing his true feelings about K9 by growling at the prop (after John Leeson had delivered some techno-babble line) "yeah, well you never fxcking know the answer when it's important

S'gotta be the classic Catchphrase out-take which made it look like Mr. Chips was having a w**k.

B

Was it an out take or did it get shown? But, agreed one of the funniest , accidental bit of TV.

CH

No, I don't think they could possibly get away with showing it during Prime Time. Not with half the audience having hysterics.

B

Or that fantastic moment on Countdown, where Carol put up 'W**KMEOFF'...

Can never forget Bill (?) Grundy encouraging the Sex Pistols to have a good old swear on live TV. The Pistols went on to greater things, but it was the Job Centre for Grundy.