Oops: BBC Puts Cab Driver Waiting for Fare on Live as Technology Guru "Guy Kewney"

Remember the scene in "The Naked Gun" when Leslie Neilsen (as incompetent cop Frank Drebbin) is working undercover at a baseball game as opera singer "Enrico Palazzo," and botches the National Anthem on live TV?

The scene shifts then to the real Palazzo, bound and gagged in a locker room with a TV, writhing in anger and despair as he watches Drebbin butcher the anthem under Palazzo’s name.

It wasn’t quite that dire, but as Biased BBC reports, the BBC’s 24-hour news channel made a similar faux pas a few days ago.

"BBC News 24 cocked things up big time last Monday when they interviewed respected technology commentator Guy Kewney on the outcome of the Apple Computer vs. Apple Music case. Except, rather than place Mr. Kewney in front of lightweight Karen Bowerman, they chose his taxi driver for her to interview instead. Bowerman proceeded to interview the taxi driver, whose Frank Spencer style expressions, when he realises their mistake, are priceless!"

Biased BBC has a link to the cringe-making interview, in which "Kewney" (the French-accented cabbie remains unidentified) admits "I don’t know. I’m not at all sure what I’m doing here."

(This, incidentally, may be one of the few times a London cab driver has kept an opinion to himself.)

The London Times’ Jack Malvern relates that the real Kewney maintained some dry humor about the matter:

"Mr Kewney, meanwhile, was still waiting in reception when he saw the taxi driver being introduced under his name. ‘Anybody would have been fascinated to see me introduced live on air, as the expert witness in the studio,’ he wrote on his weblog. ‘Me? Not fascinated; astonished! What would you feel, if, while you were sitting in that rather chilly reception area, you suddenly saw yourself -- not sitting in reception, but live, on TV?’ He added that it was especially surprising because the man, who spoke with a French accent, looked nothing like him. ‘I’m not black. I’m not-black on a startling scale; I’m fair-haired, blue-eyed, prominent-nosed, and with the sort of pale skin that makes my dermatologist wince each time I complain about an itchy mole.’"

Watch the video of the incident here.