French TV: when Sting becomes "string"

Ah the delights of live television and radio.

Mistakes are inevitably made: sometimes embarrassing, often amusing as long as they're not inappropriate.

After all who hasn't seen or heard one of those programmes poking fun at presenters' bloopers especially when terribly earnest anchors become tongue tied and mispronounce a name or a word with hilarious results?

And anyone paying attention to the Tuesday evening broadcast of this country's most watched prime time news, will undoubtedly have had a smile on their face courtesy of Laurence Ferrari.

The short report she voiced over was on British rock singer, Sting, who was in Brazil to meet Raoni Metyktire as part of a campaign to urge the country's government to listen to the concerns of indigenous peoples over the proposed construction of the massive Belo Monte hydro-electric dam in the Amazon.

Only Ferrari threw in an "r" into the former Police lead singer's name before making a quick correction and only just preventing herself from laughing (it doesn't matter if you don't speak French, you'll still be able to get the gist of what happened).



True professionalism and probably one many would wish to replicate under similar circumstance, especially those among us who have at one time or another been guilty of on-air giggles.

Such as a certain person not a million miles away from this keyboard who once announced the result of a tennis match between Marc Rosset, then the Swiss number one, and fellow Swiss, Roger Federer, early on in his career, as a "straight sets" win for the latter.

Except the second "s" in "sets" was somehow replaced with an "x", followed by a quick correction and uncontrollable chortling before a jingle came to the rescue.

Just for the record, and to return to Sting, following the recent release of his album "If on a Winter's Night", the 58-year-old will be giving a one-date only concert here in France at the Salle Pleyel in Paris on December 15.