It was the moment when the normally austere voice of the morning news collapsed in a fit of giggles.
Newsreader Charlotte Green broke down in hysterics in the middle of a bulletin on Radio 4's Today programme yesterday after introducing an item about the oldest known recording of the human voice.
As the clip of a woman singing the French song Au Clair de la Lune played, one of her colleagues apparently whispered in her ear that it sounded like a bee buzzing in a bottle.
This caused her to start laughing, known in the trade as corpsing, and her gig- gling only got worse as she attempted to read a report about the death of Hollywood screenwriter Abby Mann, who won an Academy Award in 1961 for his film Judgment at Nuremberg.
Scots journalist James Naughtie was forced to intervene and his co-presenter, Ed Stourton, later apologised to Mann's family. "We have been inundated with hundreds of e-mails asking us to play that again," Stourton said. "We hope that the family of Abby Mann will understand that it obviously wasn't intended as any slight towards him."
Scores of listeners posted comments on the BBC's message boards, with some saying Green's giggles had "brightened up a gloomy Friday" and others complained about "unprofessional" laughter.
One listener, posting online, said: "Most unfortunate as she was announcing the death of Hollywood writer and producer Abby Mann. Very unprofessional Charlotte!"
However, another added: "We have all done something like this in the past. When you get the giggles it is always worse when you should be serious!!! I couldn't stop laughing when I heard her."
Green said later: "I'm afraid I just lost it, I was completely ambushed by the giggles."
It was the second time Green has fallen victim to corpsing. In 1997 she had a fit of giggles after reading an item about Papua New Guinea's head of armed forces - Jack Tuat.
After that incident, she said: "It's an open secret I have a ribald sense of humour. For me, it's essential to laugh at the absurdity of life. Inevitably, the laughter sometimes spills over into my work and I find myself poleaxed by merriment."
The BBC said yesterday they had received five complaints.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article