Oscar Cainer:
FRIDAY, APRIL 23
After a rather bacchanalian dinner last night at private members’ club 5 Hertford Street, I staggered, deeply hung-over, to my local cafe for a caffeine-fuelled recovery mission.
(To convey the full horror of my condition, The Sun later ran sneak paparazzi photos of me slumped, corpse-like, at my table with the not entirely inaccurate words: ‘Piers Morgan was today hanging by a thread after enjoying a boozy night out.’)
After a few minutes, a young man approached me.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said in a Scandinavian accent, ‘but it is you? The TV presenter?’
I smiled and nodded. ‘It is, yes.’ He almost self-combusted with excitement.
‘I knew it! Mr Clarkson from Top Gear!
It is so great to meet you, I’m a massive fan!’ My smile disappeared faster than Boris Johnson is currently deleting his text messages.
FRIDAY, APRIL 30
Lunch at the River Cafe with Gary Lineker and Sky News anchor Mark Austin.
‘Before we start,’ said Gary, ‘and at the risk of you storming out, I just want to say that I completely believe Meghan Markle.’
‘Me too,’ declared Austin, solemnly. ‘Even about the stuff that’s now been proven to be untrue.’
‘Ho bloody ho,’ I replied, as they both then fell about laughing.
‘You shouldn’t have walked off set,’ Gary scolded, more seriously.
‘I know,’ I replied. ‘But we’ve all done things we regret on live TV.’
‘I once called the entire country paedophiles,’ admitted Austin. ‘I was supposed to start ITV’s News At Ten with the words “Good evening, paedophiles in Britain who fail to notify authorities when moving home will in future face the full wrath of the law”, but due to the lack of a crucial comma in the script, I ended up saying “Good evening paedophiles”, and then inexplicably paused. Within seconds, I was trending on social media with viewers posting comments like, “Speak for yourself, mate!” ’
Gary revealed that his worst cock-up came while he was doing punditry for Al Jazeera on a Champions League match between Schalke and Montpellier. When the latter went 1-0 up, the goal-scorer fell to his knees with another player and they placed their foreheads on the ground.
Gary winced as he recalled: ‘I said something like “A terrific effort from Karim Ait-Fana, who scored from just outside the area and then ate grass… as you do!” All hell promptly broke loose because it turned out they were both Muslim players and were in fact praying. I felt terrible when I realised, especially given Al Jazeera has such a large Islamic audience. Still makes me shudder now when I think about it.’
My own live TV nadir came at CNN when I was informed by a producer in my ear of breaking news that an American comedian named Patrice O’Neal had died.
I didn’t know O’Neal, and unfortunately one rather important fact hadn’t been made clear to me, and I hadn’t thought to clarify it, leading to a disastrous assumption on my part.
‘It’s a sad day for comedy with the death of Patrice O’Neal,’ I said. ‘She died of a stroke today. I want to take a look at a clip of Patrice, just to remind everyone how funny she was…’
To my horror, the clip featured a large man cracking jokes. ‘PATRICE WAS A HE!!!’ shrieked my producer.
My heart sank. Hoping nobody had noticed, I said at the end of the clip: ‘That was Patrice O’Neal — such a funny guy.’
But you can’t kid Twitter, which, as with Mark and Gary’s mistakes, promptly sent my horrendous error viral and into permanent TV gaffe history.
TUESDAY, MAY 4
Half the country watched the recent finale of Jed Mercurio’s brilliant Line Of Duty, and furious debate has raged ever since about whether it was a sublimely skilful ending to an enthralling series or a massively disappointing damp squib.
I’m definitely (!) in the latter camp, believing that village idiot DCI Ian Buckells couldn’t plot his way out of a children’s maze, let alone be the criminal mastermind H.
But when I congratulated Vicky McClure, who plays DI Kate Fleming, and told her ‘I’d have preferred you to be H and go out in a hail of machine-gun fire, but it was true event TV and I loved how invested I became in it all’, she replied: ‘Glad it gave people a bit of distraction!’ And in the end, after the God-awful year we’ve all endured, isn’t that exactly what was desperately needed?
WEDNESDAY, MAY 5
It’s been announced that Alastair Campbell will co-host Good Morning Britain next week, the latest ‘try-out’ for my old job.
(I’ve been amused by the ‘Who will replace Piers?’ media debate, though tend to agree with ITV’s director of TV Kevin Lygo, who might as well have been talking about Hannibal Lecter when he said: ‘Piers is a special thing. You can’t replace somebody like him. There is nobody like Piers, for good or bad.’)
My ex-TV wife Susanna Reid told viewers her new partner was ‘someone to provoke strong reaction and lively debate, tackle the big issues and speak in a language that real people understand’.
Hmm, that sounds familiar! Then GMB’s Twitter account urged Campbell: ‘Welcome to the team! We can’t wait for some fiery debates, don’t hold back!’ Hmm, again.
Given the manner of my departure, this seems extremely unwise advice…
I’ve known Alastair for donkey’s years and, despite numerous bust-ups, always got on well with him. He’s also a properly trained and very experienced journalist, which I think every news show presenter should be.
So, I wish him well.
But forgive me for having a wry chuckle at the fact that I had to leave the show for declining to apologise for disbelieving Princess Pinocchio’s porky-pies, only to now be replaced by someone who has never apologised for spinning us into an illegal war that cost more than a million lives.