You would normally expect the role of Heathrow chief executive to be a fairly anonymous position away from the public eye, but Thomas Woldbye is in danger of becoming a household name after it emerged he slept through two emergency notification calls and “several” phone calls after a fire at a substation knocked out power supplies to the airport in March.
He would not be the first person to be entirely unaware of what was going on around him. Here are some other well-known examples.
A case of mistaken identity
Sometimes it is not your fault. Guy Goma went to the BBC for a job interview in 2006 and somehow ended up on air when he was mistaken for a guest. In 2023, Goma said he was intending to sue the BBC for unpaid royalties over the experience.
Standing in entirely the wrong place
Live broadcast can be a tricky arena for not paying attention in public. Sometimes you just have to style it out. “You can pretend like you haven’t noticed,” the BBC News presenter Martine Croxall said after the camera zoomed in on her empty chair at the start of a news bulletin, while she was standing at the other end of the studio ready to do her piece to an entirely different camera.
Holding entirely the wrong thing
Sometimes it is the props that can reveal how unprepared you are. In 2013, Simon McCoy presented a news bulletin while holding a ream of A4 printer paper, which he had picked up in lieu of the iPad he was supposed to be using. Ever the professional, he continued with the news.
Never work with animals or children – even if they are your own
Prof Robert Kelly is a highly qualified and renowned international political analyst, with a distinguished career, and is chiefly famous for the nonchalant way his then four-year-old daughter strode into the middle of a live TV interview. Kelly continued unabashed as the chaos – which also involved his wife and his nine-month-old son – unfolded behind him.
‘Unbelievable, Jeff!’
Perhaps, though, the pièce de résistance is the much-loved ex-footballer Chris Kamara looking like a confused labrador and saying “I don’t know Jeff, has there?” when the Sky Sports Soccer Saturday presenter Jeff Stelling went to him live at Portsmouth’s Fratton Park to ask him about a sending-off that Kamara had entirely failed to notice. “The rain must have got in my eyes, Jeff,” he says at one point in a clip that seems destined to provoke tears of laughter for years to come.
Pro tip: your phone almost certainly has settings on it that will always allow calls and notifications from key numbers to bypass silent or sleep modes. Don’t get caught out like Thomas Woldbye.
