Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/10/02/british-broadcaster-peter-siss.html
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That’s not so much a “blooper” as “being a giant shady bitch when you think the camera’s off”.
Anyway. RSVP Peter Sissons.
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I don’t know about “most famous” moment; this is the first I heard of it. OTOH, I haven’t watched BBC News in years.
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If he was that jealous he could have just gotten new tits for himself.
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Bit late for that. Unless you use a ouija board
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If that WAS Anne Robinson (as he said) then she was not a fellow presenter of Peter Sissons. Just a fellow TV person.
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You forgot to mention that he was a school friend of Paul McCartney
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Sissons presented Question Time at the BBC from 1989-1993, evening news there from 1993 to 2003, and was pastured out to BBC News 24 from 2003-2009.
Robinson presented Points of View on BBC from 1988 to 1993, Watchdog at the BBC since 1993 (with a few years’ break for that horrible game show she did), and various other BBC stuff over the years.
They weren’t fellow news presenters, but they were both BBC presenters at the same time.
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You are correct, of course, but your wording implied to those who may not know either of them (most of your US readers?) that they probably actually worked together. I was merely clarifying that this should not be inferred. I was not calling you out on factual accuracy that needed to be documented in detail. But seeing as you have…
Both being BBC presenters does not make them ‘fellow’ presenters, in my book, any more than them just being presenters in general does (which - just being presenters in general - is pretty much the same thing, given the size and breadth of the BBC).
YMMV but to me the ‘fellow’ implies some affinity amounting to more than just doing a similar job - i.e. that they actually worked together rather than merely shared a large and diverse employer.
And for those that do not know them, this clip appears to be from the time when Anne Robinson emerged from one of her several bouts of cosmetic surgery over the years, which is why he said “is that Anne Robinson?” In some of the pictures of her at these times she really was barely recognisable compared to the TV face viewers were used to. Peter Sissons wasn’t the only one surprised, but he may have been the only one to also wonder if she’d had breast surgery too, while live on air.
YMMV Peter Sissons.
The point is that both worked at the same channel, at the same time, in the same building, as presenters. So the remark is about a colleague and peer and not just a random quip about another TV person.
If anything Americans tend to assume the BBC is like cable news, each “fellow presenter” getting their own show and a weird little institutional fiefdom with it and twains never meeting much at all.
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Sissons’s remark is interesting because it suggests why he was iced out on such a thin pretext–wearing the Wrong Tie for the Queen Mum’s death reportage–from BBC1. Because he was an asshole. These days he’d just get cancelled.
Interested reeaders should know that he was nonetheless a daring TV journalist; the sort of man Bill O’Reilly falsely imagined himself to be, dodging bullets and getting Fatwa’d. Which is why a lot of Sissons post-retirement reactionary nonsense was politely ignored. Robinson is also a reactionary sort, but it’s never clear with her what’s real and what’s just the shopworn dominatrix persona.
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And the BBC using a eulogistic quote from Piers Morgan pretty much demonstrates the love lost.
Peer, perhaps. I doubt very much indeed that either regarded the other as a colleague. The BBC in many respects IS a set of weird disconnected fiefdoms and was probably more so back in Sissons’ day. And you are correct to note that despite any arseholedom, he was in his day a fearless and highly respected reporter on the front line.
I see what I think you did there. Even if you didn’t mean it, it worked. 
He was big mates with Paul McCartney. Went to school or college with John Lennon, George Harrison, Jimmy Tarbuck (gobshite comedian), Brian Labone (Everton hero), Bill Kenwright (Everton FC chairman and theatre impresario), and Steven Norris (horrible Tory mp).
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