An Australian TV news anchor’s on-air gaffe has prompted a flurry of confessions from fellow media professionals, who are tweeting about their own cringe-worthy onscreen moments in solidarity with the presenter, News.com.au reports.
In a viral clip that aired Sunday, ABC News presenter Natasha Exelby was caught fiddling with her pen unaware that she was live and had missed her cue. Her eyes drift upward toward the camera before widening in sudden cognition that she’s on air as she gasps: “now to sport.”
The outpouring of support — under the hashtag #PutYourBloopersOut — was prompted by reports that ABC News 24 had banned Exelby from any future on-air role. Although it later turned out the presenter hadn’t gotten the axe, the confessionals still make for good reading.
Among them Tracey Spicer, a former presenter on Australia’s Channel 10 tweeted, “I fainted twice and said ‘f–k’ once.” Other presenters’ admissions include mistakenly declaring minor celebrities dead, an array of Freudian slips, and prefixing To Kill a Mockingbird author Harper Lee as “the infamous.”
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Write to Joseph Hincks at joseph.hincks@time.com