Nigella’s micro-wa-vé and the return of the 'BBC dad': the weirdest TV moments of 2020

It has been a year. You might not want to look back at it, yet, but despite all the sadness, there has been an array of ridiculous, baffling and downright British television moments, too.

There was the moment Emily Maitlis’ legs mysteriously went missing at the start of Newsnight, the time Naga Munchetty almost lost it after asking Charlie Stayt when he last saw a beaver (she was introducing an item on them being an endangered species). Then there was the point when Jack Whitehall, while presenting the Brit awards, cheekily asked Harry Styles whether the woman sitting next to him was his date, only for him to respond that it was, in fact, his sister.

With millions of us confined to our homes and the television world turned into endless Zoom calls, things were bound to go wrong. Here are 10 times when it truly did.

10. Most iconic interruption of the year

Two of the most memorable moments took place on the same day on different news channels. An interview with Dr Clare Wenham about local lockdowns on the BBC News Channel went delightfully off the rails as her daughter, Scarlett, kept interrupting her to ask which shelf was best to display her unicorn.

“I think it is best on the bottom shelf,” the presenter helpfully added after Scarlett delightfully interjected in events.

Only an hour later on Sky News, foreign affairs editor Deborah Haynes was giving a diplomatic news update from her study, only for her son to barge in to ask whether he could have two biscuits. “Yes, you can have two biscuits,” responded Haynes before the camera cut back to the studio.

Many viewers were impressed by her son’s shrewd negotiation. “I can confirm that his high-stakes negotiating skills netted him two chocolate digestives,” Haynes later tweeted. You can tell that she was keen for such a negotiation not to happen again, though. The following week viewers noticed a small but noticeable barricade had been placed in front of the door.

9. Best slip of the tongue

If you’re a news or weather presenter, often your biggest fear is getting your words mixed up, therefore implying something you shouldn’t.

Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis introduced former Labour home secretary Alan Johnson “from hell,” instead of where he actually was … Hull. Then there was Matthew Amroliwala of BBC News who said that Margaret Thatcher had just tweeted her reaction to Joe Biden’s US presidential win, instead of Theresa May.

The most notable slip up this year though came from Carol Kirkwood, who got “joggers” and “dog walkers” mixed up in her head while introducing a BBC Breakfast weather report from Greenwich Park, so mistakenly told viewers from her position that she was surrounded by “lots of doggers”.

8. Weirdest dance moves

Lockdown forced television channels to cobble up some reflective programming. One of the most surreal featured Derrick Evans (AKA Mr Motivator) doing a series of workouts to inspire us to keep moving at home. Why surreal? Well, some of his moves included “We’re going to spy next door”, “We’re going to call the police because they’re going out for the third time” and something called “whipping the horse” that left absolutely nothing to the imagination.

Then there was Evans’ on-screen chemistry with TV legend Angela Rippon, one of the show’s other contributors. Often she was doing her own daft, sometimes completely contradictory dances, in the bottom right corner of the screen. “I’ve been sitting down doing the moves, but I tell you darling, if I stood up I could show you extra moves as well,” Rippon cheekily told Evans during a follow-up interview.

Evans responded by saying a strikingly similar line back to Rippon. At that point a flustered Michelle Ackerley pointed at her co-presenter and said: “Shall … shall we leave?”

7. Worst lockdown bake

The Great British Bake Off was quite a respite to this year. Alison Hammond thinking that her oven doors had gone missing, when in fact they were retractable, in the celebrity series of the show, was certainly a comfort during the first lockdown.

Yet in all of the time Bake Off has been on air, anything like the following sentence has never been said: “Lottie’s coconut and lime skull will be transformed into a spectacle bust of Louis Theroux.”

The first showstopper of the 2020 season, when the bakers had to bake a 3D cake bust of their favourite celebrities, didn’t exactly go to plan. Laura’s Freddie Mercury looked like the man from the Pringles can, Dave’s Blink 182’s Tom Delonge looked like one of the melted Nazis from the end of an Indiana Jones film. Then there was Marc’s depiction of David Bowie.

“Ziggy Stardust is going to be instantly recognisable, just because of the colours,” Prue Leith excitably reacted when she was told that he was going to bake him. From looking at how it turned out, I think it is fair to say that Prue was … not right.

6. Weird chyron of the year

A lot of the time you don’t need to listen to the telly to know what is going on. Thanks to the words displayed on the chyron, you can see what fresh hell was playing out while your television was on mute.

According to the chyrons alone, discussions this year on ITV’s leading chatshow Loose Women included “We’re Having a Period Party!”; “Are You Ready for the Robots?”; “Would You Buy a Designer ‘Poo Bag?’”; “Is Screaming Good for You?” (short answer: yes); and “How Would a Ferret Wear a Boob Tube?”

Meanwhile, on the new socially distant This Morning, you could watch things such as “Penguins Can Shoot Their Poop 4.5 Feet”, “Things You Should Not Put in Your Vagina”, “Have You Been Called a ‘Karen’?” and something worryingly called “James Martin’s Sausage Fest.”

Chyrons have occasionally gone rogue this year. Jeremy Vine on Channel 5 decided to broadcast an excerpt from an interview Matt Hancock was having with LBC. Channel 5’s chyron was placed in front of LBC’s, but as the latter’s chyron was slightly longer, the last four letters of Hancock’s surname were clearly visible.

5. Fire of the year

Having the TV world transfer to Zoom was always going to have some hitches.

The most catastrophic broadcast came from This Morning, when chef John Torode accidentally set his tea towels on fire while trying to make a McDonald’s-style McMuffin in his own kitchen. Due to a delay of several seconds on Torode’s end, Philip Schofield’s calm and reassuring words of “TEA TOWEL’S ON FIRE, JOHN!! YOU’RE ON FIRE, JOHN!!!” were not heard by Torode for several seconds. After all that, making a McMuffin from home seemed a bit too much hassle.

4. Nigella’s microwave

A late, but great, entry into this list comes from Nigella on BBC Two, where mid-recipe, she put her ingredients into what she referred to as a “micro-wa-vé”.

Twitter was in bits. BBC subtitling added an exclamation mark when the words micro-wa-vé appeared on screen, as if the subtitler writing it up was having the time of their life. The next day Nigella reminded everyone on Twitter that she had said it as a joke, shortly before retweeting a meme suggesting that Ikea was now selling meekrø wahvés.

3. Weirdest ending to an interview

Thanks to Zoom there were also some wonderfully bizarre interview terminations. Former prime minister Gordon Brown decided that the best way to end his interview with BBC Breakfast was to simply slap down the lid of his laptop. “Well, that ended,” responded Charlie Stayt, sitting next to an equally confused Naga Munchetty.

The weirdest interview termination, however, was between Vivian Westwood and Victoria Derbyshire on BBC News. Earlier that day, Westwood had been protesting Julian Assange’s extradition from the UK, by suspending herself several feet in the air outside the Old Bailey, in a human-sized birdcage (as you do).

Derbyshire cornered Westwood on defending Assange, but Westwood was having none of it: “All the media … they are such morons, such spin, brainwashed people,” said Westwood, with a camera dangerously close to her face. “And you’re one of them.”

Derbyshire thought that it was probably wise to wrap the interview up at this point. Meanwhile, with no warning, Westwood started shouting: “Get me out of the cage!” as she was being faded out, making it sound as if she had fallen down a hole. “‘Get me out of the cage’, I think were her last words,” Derbyshire calmly repeated to the camera, before moving on to the next item.

2. Best one-liner

Sticking with Victoria Derbyshire, she summed up the nation’s mood perfectly with a great one-liner while reporting that the summer solstice at Stonehenge had been cancelled. After saying it was going to be streamed online instead, she said with mild exasperation: “or you could … just get up and look at the sky yourself”.

Simon McCoy tried to compete while reporting on a metro train that crashed into a sculpture of a whale tail (with thankfully, no injuries). After ending his report, he followed it up by saying that news pictures had been provided by “Dutch Whaleways”.

Yet the most iconic one-liner of the year came from Celebrity Mastermind. Casualty actor Amanda Henderson was asked by John Humphrys: “The 2019 book entitled No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference is a collection of speeches made by a Swedish climate change activist. What’s her name?”

A clearly stumped Henderson responded: “Sharon?”

Naturally, Greta Thunberg later changed her name to Sharon on Twitter, in tribute.

1. Best reunion of the year

The greatest TV moment of 2017 was a BBC World News interview with political analyst Robert Kelly that went delightfully off the rails when his two children, one of them in a baby walker, invaded the room, only to be dragged out shortly afterwards.

At the end of March, when the first lockdown was starting to grip much of the world, our favourite family returned to the same channel to talk to us reassuringly about how to cope with home life.

Inevitably, that interview went off the rails, too. One of their children ruffled her dad’s hair while he tried to answer a question, while the other got bored so easily he went off to fetch a games console, before returning and delightfully body-slamming back into bed.

The mild chaos, the home life. Nothing summed up the year more perfectly.