16 comments

  • meken 0 minutes ago
    Love the story and the article. The only nit I have with article:

    > “His answers are calm, understandable, and maybe in some ways more digestible than we would get from an expert,” he said.

    This does not reflect his actual responses. The interviewer keys off some of his dramatic sounding phrasing to keep the conversation flowing, but his answers are inscrutable.

  • ebbi 13 hours ago
    His facial expression when the presenter was introducing 'him' is absolute gold! When I first watched it, I actually thought it was a skit - it being BBC, the animated facial reactions, the presenter trying to navigate his (non)-answers.
  • zdw 13 hours ago
    This seems to have happened about a year before "The IT Crowd" episode "Smoke and Mirrors" aired.

    In that episode Moss, one of the IT denizens, goes to a TV studio where he is mistakenly put on a news program and interviewed about a war.

    I wonder if they're related...

  • mmsimanga 9 hours ago
    On South African national TV the interviewee's chair broke. Still cracks me up to this day. https://youtu.be/XnHIeXQCfog?si=u4kzKfPLKSNGbBf_
    • opium_tea 8 minutes ago
      The caption declaring him chairperson is absolutely perfect.
    • londons_explore 6 hours ago
      There must have been some maintenance crew who had been asking for a bigger budget for months...

      I wonder if they assisted the chairs downfall...

    • hermitcrab 3 hours ago
      That gave me a good laugh on a Monday morning. Thanks.
    • dude250711 4 hours ago
      Because of their composure, it almost looks like an intended format: you have 20 seconds to make your point before the chair collapses.
  • toast0 9 hours ago
    I hadn't seen or heard of this one. It reminds me a bit of this classic c-span moment: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/12/16/371232190...
    • swores 1 hour ago
      Are you just sharing "this is something else on a TV program that amused me", or am I being dense in my failing to spot anything that's similar between the two situations?
  • sxzygz 2 days ago
  • rchaud 11 hours ago
    One of the first viral videos in the early years of Youtube. This was at a time when the Internet was just small enough that a single video could organically circulate around the whole world and be universally appreciated for its ridiculous yet endearing nature, by adults and kids alike.
  • rmason 2 days ago
    For those without a NYT subscription:

    https://archive.is/xZgBI#selection-505.0-505.55

  • renticulous 3 hours ago
    Just goes onto show how fragile the trust network between humans is overall. Today, journalism is all about "trusted sources", "official sources", "my birdie told me".
    • GJim 3 hours ago
      Oh dear.

      If you bothered to read the story behind this, you would know the chap had the same name as the 'real' person being interviewed who was waiting in a different reception area. Our man got called forward by mistake, he was a quiet chap who didn't want to rock the boat and so (very amusingly) got interviewed by an unknowing presenter.

      To claim this is about fragile trust, rather than a silly mistake, is bollocks.

  • heldrida 12 hours ago
    Related HN posted earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48074260

    A book was released…

  • manyturtles 9 hours ago
    I wish I could have seen Guy Kewney's face when he saw this. Sadly now passed, he had a charmingly irreverent sense of humor around Ziff-Davis UK back in the day.
    • fakedang 3 hours ago
      Well he didn't take it lightly and was very upset. They apparently did a pre-recorded version of his answers that the producers of that segment specifically told the night shift to air online, but the night shift didn't, which further exasperated him.

      https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VO0kaSHAOSE

  • dagi3d 6 hours ago
    Did he eventually get the job he was initially applying?
  • PUSH_AX 4 hours ago
    They didn't give him the job in the end!
  • mkoryak 10 hours ago
  • ares623 11 hours ago
    [flagged]
    • recursive 11 hours ago
      We're human supremacists. We would take risks to rescue stranded hikers, but not as much to rescue a stranded e bike. We eat animals but not humans. Humans are special to humans.
    • DoktorDelta 10 hours ago
      He didn't boil a lake in the process