Gift of the gaffe: how broadcasting blusters became unavoidable

At the Edinburgh Television festival about 20 years ago, I remember Sharon Sandberg pointing out that digitalisation was moving so fast that it would soon be possible to have all the music ever recorded on a device the size of a cigarette packet. 

It’s not just Mozart and the Beatles; microphones and cameras are now so omnipresent that it is almost impossible to escape finding yourself being recorded when you have no intention of going on the record. 

“Hot mike moments” are all but unavoidable for politicians and broadcast journalists. I’ve had my own unfortunate moments, although not this month when I’ve been away from studios.

Of course, not all broadcasted gaffes were accidents at the time they were recorded. The past can catch up with you. Liz Truss is currently suffering discomfort from having her on-the-record words played back. If she becomes Prime Minister she’ll have to reach Churchillian heights of rhetoric to eclipse her unconsciously ridiculous “It. Is. A. Disgrace” cheese import speech as her most memorable soundbite. 

Truss is also trying to eat her words following the resurfacing of her recorded comments in 2019 about “more graft” being required of British workers. She was talking about the right-wing manifesto Britannia Unchained which she co-authored with Kwasi Kwarteng, Priti Patel, and Dominic Raab. Breaking contemporary “levelling up” shibboleths beloved of Johnsonian Tories, she also suggested London had a better “working culture” because of Londoners’ “mindset and attitude”. The book’s verdict that British workers are among “the worst idlers in the world” has become an orphan. Truss and Raab, who backs Sunak, are arguing over who takes responsibility for that chapter in their book.

Speeches are carefully scripted. Politicians giving interviews and news conferences are fiercely schooled with “lines to take” and warned which areas they should avoid at all costs. Audiences can sense that they are not getting the full, or true, picture. As a consequence, informal comments caught on mike are relished because they are thought to reveal what the interviewees really think. These slip-ups often happen in the moments before or after the red light on the camera goes on to record an interview. 

Relaxing after a recording on Conservative Eurosceptics with ITN’s Michael Brunson, John Major expressed the desire not to have more of “the bastards” in his cabinet. An insult which was seized on by his opponents and came to define his struggles with his party. Major was embarrassed by the broadcasted gaffe.

Gordon Brown suffered equally consequential exposure in 2010 when he kept a Sky News radio-mike on after a walkabout and was overheard describing the voter he had been canvassing as “just a bigoted woman”. Brown embarked on a full grovel apology. In contrast, Kenneth Clarke wasn’t the least upset when his comment went public following a studio interview with me that Theresa May was “a bloody difficult woman”.

The Royal family isn’t allowed to express opinions and woe betide anyone who dares speak on its behalf. David Cameron felt a chill wind from Windsor after he blurted that Her Majesty had “purred down the line” when he called her about the Scottish referendum “No” to independence. The Queen knows how to get her views across when necessary. On an official visit to The Times, during the Miners’ strike, she remarked to Paul Routledge, a leftwing journalist, that it was “down to one man” without naming Arthur Scargill. More recently Her Majesty was overheard complaining about those who “talk not do” with reference to the COP26 climate change summit. 

Prince Charles pulled off one of the most exquisitely insulting over-heards in 2005 during a photocall with his two teenage sons at the Klosters ski resort. “I hate doing this. Bloody awful! I can’t bear that man anyway. He’s so awful, he really is. I hate these people”, he muttered to his boys. Perhaps the heir to thrown didn’t recognize how powerfully sensitive microphones were becoming, or perhaps, like his father, the Duke of Edinburgh, he didn’t care if his gaffe was broadcasted. His comments actually cemented “that man” in place. Nicholas Witchell is still the BBC’s senior royal correspondent.

Insults make up some of the most amusing eves-droppings. Barack Obama dismissing Kanye West as “a jackass”. President Chirac giving colleagues his private views of the British: “The only thing they have done for European agriculture is Mad Cow Disease. You can’t trust people who have such bad cuisine.” Dr Anthony Fauci overhead complaining “what a moron!” about one of the Senators questioning him during a congressional hearing.  

President Biden, the working class ordinary Joe from Scranton, has chalked up his own roster of frank opinions, expletives included. This summer he was heard referring to the Fox News reporter, Peter Doocy, as a “stupid son of a bitch”. His off-mike comment that the passage of Obamacare was “a big f…ing deal” is so famous it has its own acronym, BFD.

Reporters who spend their lives on camera do not escape eternal digital vigilance. Even the sainted Julie Etchingham was accidentally broadcast during a live transmission of a David Cameron speech, suggesting that “ extermination” might be one of the answers the Prime Minister was considering to deal with immigration.

Checking online I found that I am said to have committed more gaffes than I was aware of. I don’t remember telling Iain Dale that a particular policy proposal was “bollocks” but someone overheard it and commented. Not quite as bad as Rebecca Madden, an anchor on Australia’s Channel 7, whose private opinion that Novak Djokovich was “a lying, sneaky a..hole” somehow got broadcast. 

Off-air transitions during commercial breaks are always stressful when there are just seconds to get guests on and off the set. I was embarrassed when someone at Sky News leaked a recording of me telling our political editor, Beth Rigby, rather too forcefully to take her seat. 

A few politicians are unembarrassable. Donald Trump got into the White House saying or tweeting what came into his head without a filter. The calculatedly careful Hillary Clinton paid a heavy price for openly discarding some of her opponents in a poorly worded “basket of deplorables”. Trump rode out the unearthing of the deplorable Access Hollywood “Grab ‘em by the pussy” tape with scarcely a scratch. 

In that recording, Trump was chatting to a minor member of the Bush clan, whose career as a broadcaster, unlike Trump’s, came to end after it went public. Albeit with more discipline, George W Bush pioneered the presidential loose-lipped style before Trump. His casually condescending “Yo Blair” greeting to the British Prime Minister overheard at a summit, told a story in two words that had been struggled with in a thousand newspaper columns.

Bush was responsible for my favourite broadcasted gaffe when he was first campaigning for the presidency in 2000. He and his running mate, Dick Cheney, were just getting ready to speak to a news conference, unaware that the microphones were already on. 

Bush leant over to Cheney to point out one of the reporters. “That’s Adam Clymer, major league asshole for The New York Times”, Bush explained. “Oh yeah, he is – big time” the future vice President agreed.

Both men refused to apologise subsequently. That is the way it should be. Modern technology is making it ever more likely that gaffes will be caught out, sneaked on or broadcasted in some other way. But the age-old motto “Never explain, never complain” remains the best way to navigate the pitfalls of the digital age.