Watch: An early morning BBC live broadcast on Brexit was drowned out by ‘obscene’ noises
It was all a prank.
BBC broadcasts seem to always be full of surprises – a news presenter who lost his way around the set, an interviewee interrupted by his children, the eternally blasé Simon McCoy – the list goes on. This is perhaps why Emma Vardy, a political correspondent for BBC, continued unfazed through her live report even as “sexual noises” drowned out her programme.
The early morning viewers of BBC Breakfast certainly didn’t expect a report on Brexit, live from outside the Houses of Parliament in London, to get quite so naughty. Although some viewers were horrified, and others had a field day on Twitter, Vardy continued her report without the slightest hesitation or acknowledgement of the noises, and powered her way right through to the end.
The show hosts Charlie Stayt and Naga Munchetty also ignored the noises. It was only later that BBC Breakfast’s Twitter account responded to queries about the “sex noises”. They wrote, “Someone nearby was playing music whilst we were live! So that’s what you could hear.”
Their statement was only partially true. The source of the sound was a van fitted with a large loudspeaker, set up specifically to play a “sex noise prank” on the hapless reporter, by prankster and music producer Lee Marshall, popularly known as DiscoBoy.
He posted a video (below), which was also featured on TrollStation, a popular YouTube channel of British pranksters, that reveals the “behind the scenes” action.
