“The BBC has admitted it was taken for a ride by a cabbie. The network has apologized to its viewers for a studio mix-up that resulted in a cab driver appearing on live television as an expert on Internet music downloads. ‘We interviewed the wrong person,’ a British Broadcasting Corp. spokeswoman said Monday while speaking on condition of anonymity in line with company policy. ‘We apologize to viewers for any confusion.’ The case of mistaken identity occurred May 8 – the day Britain’s High Court awarded Apple Computer a victory in a lawsuit against Apple Corps, the Beatles’ commercial arm,” Danica Kirka reports for The Associated Press. “In a reaction story to the verdict that is now circulating widely on the Internet, consumer affairs correspondent Karen Bowerman welcomed who the BBC thought was computer expert Guy Kewney. As Bowerman introduced him, there’s a moment when the still unidentified driver realized the mistake. He scrunched his face into a grimace, and in panic tried to open his mouth as if to explain. ‘Were you surprised by this verdict today?’ Bowerman asked.”
Full article here.
Video via YouTube (if it doesn’t appear promptly below) is here.
Guy Kewney blogs about the episode here.
[UPDATE: 1:28pm EDT: “OK, reset everything you’ve heard about my appearance on the BBC: they’ve found the “taxi driver” and (as I have constantly tried to explain to everybody) he isn’t a taxi driver. His name is Guy Goma – which goes some way to explaining why he (and the BBC receptionist) assumed that someone asking for Guy Kewney was asking for him. And he wasn’t there to pick up a fare, because he’s not a cabbie. He’s a Business Studies graduate, from the Congo, and he was there in reception because he was applying for a high level IT job with the BBC,” Guy Kewney explains. Full article here.
You have to watch the video – the cabbie’s reaction during his introduction is — as Kewney himself describes it — priceless.
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