Presentation Bloopers

[Vile Consort]

I haven't listened to R3 all that much this week, but I did hear:

• A presenter on In Tune (not Mr Rafferty!) suggesting that it was 60 years since Elizabeth I ascended the throne.
• Rob Cowan telling us that the notes B, A, C, H in English were B flat, A, C, B sharp.

To have heard two such gaffes in so few hours of listening makes me wonder how common these schoolboy howlers have now become. Fortunately the presentation style no longer makes any attempt at sounding authoritative, so it perhaps doesn't matter if presenters come out with a load of old tommy-rot on occasion.

Well I think it does matter, and one is certainly on firmer ground taking the BBC management to task for factual errors than for the style of presentation not being to one's taste.

Even if they are corrected quickly (the first one was, the second wasn't) they make the presentation farcical.

Am I being too harsh?

[Mr Pee]

These sound like simple slips of the tongue to me. There is bound to be the odd mistake on live radio, and Rob Cowan has a great knowledge of music, so he would certainly know what the BACH notes are in English.

[umslopogaas]

Rob Cowan did correct himself on the BACH mistake very soon after he made it, acknowledging that several people had emailed to point it out.

[Beef Oven]

I haven't listened to R3 all that much this week, but I did hear:

• A presenter on In Tune (not Mr Rafferty!) suggesting that it was 60 years since Elizabeth I ascended the throne.
• Rob Cowan telling us that the notes B, A, C, H in English were B flat, A, C, B sharp.

To have heard two such gaffes in so few hours of listening makes me wonder how common these schoolboy howlers have now become. Fortunately the presentation style no longer makes any attempt at sounding authoritative, so it perhaps doesn't matter if presenters come out with a load of old tommy-rot on occasion.

Well I think it does matter, and one is certainly on firmer ground taking the BBC management to task for factual errors than for the style of presentation not being to one's taste.

Even if they are corrected quickly (the first one was, the second wasn't) they make the presentation farcical.

Am I being too harsh?

Just (re-?) read 'The Envy of the World' to see where all this started.

[french frank]

I wouldn't want to get into any discussion about mistakes made by individual presenters, but I do think a three-hour daily programme puts a greater strain on a presenter's knowledge. Even the best informed can't carry in their head everything covered by a varied programme.

The 90-minute In Concert which used to be the 'breakfast' programme had an average of about seven pieces of varying length. A 3-hour Breakfast had 25 or more (31 was the highest I noticed). Hard to find a presenter who would have all the facts at their fingertips to cope with that every day.

NB My solution is to have shorter programmes and less interactive trivia from presenters .

[LeMartinPecheur]

My solution is to have shorter programmes and less interactive trivia from presenters .

ff - spoilsport! What would all the MBers here have to moan about??

[mangerton]

I haven't listened to R3 all that much this week, but I did hear:

• A presenter on In Tune (not Mr Rafferty!) suggesting that it was 60 years since Elizabeth I ascended the throne.

Many Scots, myself included, believe strongly that that is the Queen's correct title. She is not Elizabeth II of Great Britain or of the UK, and was badly misguided (by Churchill?) when she adopted that title.

So, not a howler at all.

[Vile Consort]

I wouldn't want to get into any discussion about mistakes made by individual presenters, but I do think a three-hour daily programme puts a greater strain on a presenter's knowledge. Even the best informed can't carry in their head everything covered by a varied programme.

The 90-minute In Concert which used to be the 'breakfast' programme had an average of about seven pieces of varying length. A 3-hour Breakfast had 25 or more (31 was the highest I noticed). Hard to find a presenter who would have all the facts at their fingertips to cope with that every day.

NB My solution is to have shorter programmes and less interactive trivia from presenters .

These particular slips were hardly buried among a lot of difficult-to-remember facts about far too many pieces. Anybody who can visualise a piano keyboard and hear the BACH motif in their head should not have made the B sharp mistake!

I don't think you get so many elementary slips on Radio Four, for instance. You don't hear John Humphreys saying "A moment ago I described Nelson Mandela as the former President of Albania: I meant South Africa, of course". And the Today programme covers at least as many stories as Breakfast has pieces of music.

[Panjandrum]

I agree. Didn't a certain well paid female presenter announce Dvorak's choral work as the "Shtabat Mater", no doubt wishing to show off her impeccable slavic (sic) pronunciation. that's where a producer worth their crust would whisper "it's a latin text; no lisping sibilants required."

[Bryn]

Who is "John Humphreys"? You don't usually find bloopers like that on these boards. The Today Programme frontman's name is Humphrys, I think you will find.

[Panjandrum]

Who is "John Humphreys"? You don't usually find bloopers like that on these boards. The Today Programme frontman's name is Humphrys, I think you will find.

Ah, but you wouldn't hear that though.

[Mr Pee]

Who is "John Humphreys"? You don't usually find bloopers like that on these boards. The Today Programme frontman's name is Humphrys, I think you will find.

And there are plenty of slips on Radio 4.

[Don Petter]

Who is "John Humphreys"? You don't usually find bloopers like that on these boards. The Today Programme frontman's name is Humphrys, I think you will find.

Isn't 'blooper' a bloomer?

[ahinton]

Who is "John Humphreys"? You don't usually find bloopers like that on these boards. The Today Programme frontman's name is Humphrys, I think you will find.

He's a pianist and teacher (see http://www.conservatoire.bcu.ac.uk/p...john-humphreys) but, as far as I am aware, has yet to participate in an edition of Today.

I also heard the B sharp gaffe but thought that even this paled into relative insignificance compared to Petroc Trelawney informing his listeners that Marc-André Hamelin (whom you'd have assumed he'd realised is a distinguished pianist, since he was introducing his live recital from Wigmore Hall last Monday that opened with a Haydn sonata) has a new CD for release next May (I think) in his ongoing survey of the Haydn Symphonies...

[ahinton]

Then there was the earnest Scawttish announcer at the RNSO concert the other evening in which the first work on the programme was evidently Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un fin, even though said announcer used the English work faun in his spiel; this sat most unconfortably alonside his citation of Boulez's claim for this work that it marked the beginning of modern music. Not only that, I caught him at least twice calling the conductor Stéphane Deneuve rather than Denève, as though he was in fact a possible relative of Catherine.