A BBC reporter was caught off-guard while covering the Women’s World Cup when a member of the public approached him during a live broadcast and promptly swore about the Tories.
Yes, uncensored swearing happened on the 2pm BBC News segment.
The reporter, Joe Inwood, was speaking directly to the BBC newsroom for a live segment just after England beat China 6-1.
He was reporting from a walkway near some London bars and restaurants when an enthusiastic member of public came up to him with a pint in his hand.
With his arms wide open, he hummed a sort of drum roll – while Inwood smiled and even extended his microphone to conduct an impromptu interview – before, in a singsong voice, the man suddenly said: “Fuck the Tories!”
The moment the curse word crept out of the fan’s mouth, Inwood looked aghast, said, “woahh”, quickly held up his notepad over the man’s face while apologising directly to the audience at home.
The journalist sidestepped the man, who may or may not have even been a football fan himself, taking the camera with him, saying: “I do apologise about that, I am sorry about that.”
The tournament is taking place in Australia and New Zealand so it was 11pm there – but it was 2pm for Inwood, the member of the public and any BBC News viewers in the UK.
Still, it went down a treat on Twitter when the six-second clip was shared, wracking up more than three million views and more than 25k likes in less than 24 hours.
Even Inwood himself joked that it was a “personal career highlight”, although he then linked to Wikipedia’s sarcasm page to make it clear that he was definitely not being sincere when he said that.