What It Takes To Be A Talking Head On The BBC These Days
from the not-much,-apparently dept
The Onion loves to mock man in the street interviews that the media enjoys. If you ever watch the local news, interviewing cab drivers seems to be popular. However, what about so called “experts” on TV news? It would appear that the BBC mistook a cab driver for an expert on the Apple v. Apple case last week, and all the Sunday papers in the UK are having fun with it. The “expert” in question is Guy Kewney, well known to anyone who closely follows the wireless space for his blog Newswireless.net, which we’ve linked to on more than a few occasions. Guy has a fairly distinct look and his photo is all over his site — so it’s hard to imagine the BBC team supposedly putting him on the air not noticing just how different the person they put on the air was. Guy’s own account of the event notes that the someone from the show even admitted that he knew the Guy he put on camera looked nothing like the Guy he saw on the website… but he asked the guy twice and he said he was Guy Kewney, so on he went (though it would appear that English is not this gentleman’s first language). However, as the interview goes on, you can probably spot the recognition in his face the moment he realizes he’s in trouble in the video. The sequence of facial expressions, from talking head in waiting, to surprise, to shock, to thinking if he should tell them their mistake, to embarrassment and then right back into interested talking head about to give his opinion is truly classic. To their credit, the BBC later fesses up to the mistake as it asks for any information on just who it really was they put on the air. In the interview, though, the guy (not Guy) does make an effort to answer the questions seriously, but doesn’t seem to know what he’s actually talking about. Kinda like most talking heads on these types of programs. Update: Turns out the guy isn’t a cab driver, and is named Guy Goma — which could explain at least some of the confusion. He was at the BBC offices to interview for a job in their IT group, and assumed the whole thing was a part of the interview process.
Comments on “What It Takes To Be A Talking Head On The BBC These Days”
This is so... wonderful!!!
The face! The face of this guy!
Just watch the video… Oh god I want him on air again… something about russian nuclear submarines, or maybe the peace in Dafur, something like very technical and very sophisticated would be great.
So who got paid?
LOL
timesonlines.uk, you fools are funny too. That lad was not a cabbie, he was there at the BBC for his interview.
Dumbed down?
I think he did fine. Goes to show how lightweight the questions on TV news are.
He made as much sense as any other interviewee on TV these days, babbling on about something which may or may not be related to the question that was asked.
London Cabbies
weeeeellll its like this guv’ world over knows see? noone knows more ’bout stuff than a cabbie…
‘ear i had that bush bloke in me cab once…..