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Veteran broadcaster Nick Robinson was forced to apologise this morning after becoming the third BBC presenter to mispronounce Jeremy Hunt’s surname as the C-word live on air.
The crude blunder took place on the Today programme when Robinson, 61, was interviewing employment minister Alison McGovern and made reference the former chancellor.
He said: “When the Tories announced £12 billion in welfare cuts, and at the time the Labour Party condemned that, they said that Rishi Sunak and Jeremy C*** had no idea where they’d get the money, you’re going to do exactly the same aren’t you in this Budget?”
Once alerted to the error, Robinson quickly gave a public apology around 10 minutes later.
The broadcaster said: “The eagle-eared amongst you have just pointed out that I repeated what was known as the Jim Naughtie error up until my last interview in which I mispronounced the name of the former Conservative chancellor, the current shadow chancellor, so can I just apologise to Jeremy Hunt.
“Again, I’m so sorry.”
In a bid to stress his recognition of the error, Robinson emphasised the “H” in the former chancellor’s name.
The error first took place back in 2010 when Jim Naughtie famously made the same mistake when he hosted the Today programme.
“I was there with lots of bits of paper and someone was shoving headlines in front of me and I said, ‘After the news we’ll be talking to Jeremy C***’… And all I could see behind the glass were arms going up in the air, as in ‘We surrender’,” Naughtie told the Radio Times.
“And the guy who was passing the news bulletins to the late Rory Morrison went under the table [laughing].”
Following the 2010 incident, the mispronunciation of Hunt’s name became more widespread and the blunder was also famously made on Sky News.
In 2019, BBC presenter Victoria Derbyshire became the second presenter at the broadcaster to make the mistake when she hosted her news and current affairs programme.
The error took place during a debate about who should replace the then Tory leader Theresa May when Derbyshire said: “You say that the man that you’re backing – Jeremy C***…
“I’m so sorry, Jeremy Hunt.”
Following Derbyshire’s slipup, Hunt urged people to “grow up” and stop mispronouncing his name, revealing that the rhyme has been used to taunt him since his school days.
“I’m used to it. I had this when I was at school. Personally, I think people should just grow up and get over the fact that my last name rhymes with a rather unpleasant word,” he told The Telegraph.
Linguists, however, have argued that the error could be becoming more frequent as broadcasters are aware that the mispronunciation has been made before.
Leendert Plug, associate professor of phonetics at Leeds University, told Wired: “Once someone has produced the error on air, that journalist, and others who have heard it, will have the error word even more highly activated in subsequent attempts at the sequence.
“Something similar happened with ‘breakfast’ for ‘Brexit’ I think – as soon as this became a known slip, it became a more productive one.”
The Independent has reached out to the Today programme for comment.
