TGIS: Thank God It's Schadenfreude! (298)

This week's joy in the misfortune of others comes courtesy of the Telegraph (from Tuesday, December 7; link good at time of posting):

The BBC suffered a series of embarrassments after two senior presenters inadvertently swore on air and a third was hoaxed by a builder he mistook for an MP.

During a day of mishaps, the corporation was forced to issue no fewer than three apologies on Monday for blunders broadcast on flagship Radio 4 current affairs programmes.

The first apology came after two of the BBC’s most senior presenters – James Naughtie, of the Today programme and Andrew Marr, on Start the Week – accidentally uttered the same four-letter obscenity on air.

They had both mispronounced the name of Jeremy Hunt, the Culture Secretary, with unfortunate consequences within 90 minutes.

Further embarassment followed a few hours later, when the World at One programme was fooled into interviewing a Yorkshire-born builder who was mistaken for a Scottish Liberal Democrat MP.

The impostor, who was telephoned by mistake, sounded decidedly startled when he was introduced to listeners as Mike Crockart, the MP for Edinburgh West.

The builder appeared to create a fresh political headache for Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, when he told James Robbins, the presenter, that he was “prepared to resign” over the Coalition’s tuition fees policy.

But in fact he was a Yorkshire man on a building site in Manchester. As he took the call, 14 of his colleagues were listening in fits of laughter in a workers’ cabin.

[Previous TGIS]