Matthew Wright show gets a pass on F-word gaffe

WARNING: CONTAINS EXPLICIT LANGUAGE. Matthew Wright reacts after a caller gives a vivid description of a works party ‘liaison’.

An insight into the perils of the live TV phone-in after Ofcom decided that Matthew Wright’s Channel 5 show would face no further action over that unfortunate F-word phone call earlier this year. The caller, in a discussion about “lending your partner to a pal”, told of how he had gone to a works do with a friend of his wife and “fucked her in the pussy”. Unfortunately for Wright, fronting his Wright Stuff daytime show on 19 August, didn’t hear him first time round and asked him to repeat it. Ofcom’s ruling, published on Monday, revealed the behind-the-scenes panic as the chap, called Jason, took to the air. “Channel 5 said that in the fast-paced environment of a live television gallery it had taken the editor a ‘split-second’ to realise what had been said,” the regulator said. “Upon realising, the editor stated ‘very firmly into Matthew’s earpiece that Jason had sworn and the audience should not hear it again, while simultaneously trying to convey to the director that the caller should be lost’”. Listen carefully and perhaps you can hear him – or someone else – shouting “no, no, no!” as Wright asks the caller to repeat himself. Alas, by then it was too late. But Ofcom said it was satisfied by the programme’s behind the scene’s procedures, however, and declared no further action necessary.