Corpse Remarks

I may have missed hearing it go out live but I certainly had plenty of further opportunities soon afterwards to enjoy newsreader Charlotte Green’s fit of giggles on the Today programme after she had just sat through the (unidentifiable) first recording of a human voice dating from 1860. Other BBC programmes and message boards rapidly picked up on the story and very soon sound clips had been posted on You Tube.



There were numerous references to her 1997 collapse while delivering news about a stranded sperm whale just after she had heard a reporter mention Papua New Guinea’s chief-of-staff Major General Jack Tuat (as if any number of fancy titles could distract from a name like that one) and there were links to Radio 2’s John ‘Boggy’ Marsh’s problem when an item about a youth who injured himself by attempting to launch a firework from his bottom instead of a bottle (so easy to confuse the two) was followed by news about some education inspectors who discovered that a school near Hyderabad contained only chickens.



Yes, it was unfortunate that the item that Charlotte was reading concerned the death of a very worthy film-maker and, of course, there were the predictable comments about her ‘unprofessional’ conduct from the po-faced/media wannabes, as if corpsing badly twice in eleven years somehow makes her the Radio 4 equivalent of ITV’s Fern Britton, whose on-screen giggling fits are now becoming a tad predictable. (I refuse to include the occasions when Charlotte loses it on the News Quiz because that’s meant to be – and is – a funny show).

As far as performers cracking up during comedy programmes is concerned, this can be a blessing or a curse. The first radio sketch I ever had broadcast that actually ran into a second minute (thereby qualifying it as a sketch rather than a quickie) only did so because a performer lost his place in the script and everyone corpsed. The result was a much better audience response, double the fee for me (I was paid per minute or part of one) and my finally being rewarded with the retained writer status that I had been working towards for months.

The downside is that it can destroy a comic creation for good. America’s long-running Saturday Night Live introduced a character called Debbie Downer, played by the hugely talented Rachel Dratch. Ms. Downer would spoil any happy occasion, such as a family reunion, by always bringing the conversation around to disasters, diseases and death. During the live broadcast, Rachel dissolved into hysterics several times, quickly followed by most of her fellow players. The studio audience loved it and the media analysed the incident in great detail but no other Debbie Downer sketch ever seemed as funny afterwards.

The all-time classic, of course, has to be the infamous Ian Botham ‘legover’ commentary from Brian Johnston in 1991. It’s always funny, however many times you hear it. Years later, I saw Radio 2 comedians Parsons and Naylor lip-synching as Johnners and Aggers on a telethon and one audience member quite literally fell off her seat laughing. When Johnners himself wrote or spoke about the worldwide response to his on-air giggles and wheezes, he seemed most proud of the fact that it got selected for Pick of the Week!




To all those newsreaders who occasionally let the world hear their human side, I say keep up the bad work – it brightens our week.

And it’s not just listeners who should be grateful; Google the name of that chap from Papua New Guinea and you will discover that, more than a decade later, he still has quite an internet presence – nearly all of it thanks to Charlotte Green. Isn’t it lovely to see a Tuat getting so much exposure?

(Reprinted from the Radio Magazine Issue 833, 9 April 2008)

Postscript: I was saddened to read of the passing last week of Harvey Korman, another performer who was apt to dissolve into giggles. Here is a fabulous clip of him with Tim Conway in a classic sketch from the Carol Burnett Show. Towards the end, he just completely gives up trying to keep a straight face or keep his laughter inaudible!