Sky News viewers were shocked when an anchor dropped the F-word on air without realizing that part of her segment was to be aired on television.
Arts and entertainment correspondent Katie Spencer let an expletive slip during a Dec. 20 report about author and comedian David Walliams being dropped by his publisher following allegations of inappropriate behaviour towards young women. (Walliams has denied the accusations against him.)
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“He published his very first book with Harper Collins back in 2008, The Boy in the Dress,” Spencer said before stumbling over her words, as seen in a video obtained by The Independent. “He’s gone on to publish a further … more than 14 … Oh f— it, I’m going to start again,” she continued.
It’s unclear if Spencer was live at the time of the report or if there had been an editing error in a pre-recorded segment, as the journalist looked at the camera and apologized, “Sorry, do not ever air me saying the F-word.” She then went on to restart her story.
The camera then cut back to the Sky News newsroom with Kamali Melbourne, Anna Jones and sports presenter Jacquie Beltrao, all of whom seemed shocked at what had just happened.
“Apologies if you heard any bad language there. We’ll check that out,” Melbourne finally said after a brief, awkward silence as he looked back and forth between his co-anchors.
He then joked about Beltrao’s entrance, “But Jacquie’s joined us — no bad language, Jacs,” as she replied with a laugh, “No bad language from me!”
Once the clip went viral, Spencer had sympathizers on social media, with one person on Reddit theorizing, “It probably wasn’t live. Looks to me like it was prerecorded and the person responsible for cutting the right take got it wrong. If it was live they’d have cut her off straight away.”
“It’s definitely not the first time a wrong take has made it on-air on telly instead of the final take, and it certainly won’t be the last time,” another person added, as a third insisted, “Somebody f—ked up, not Katie’s fault.”
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