To err is human and the saying goes for celebrities too. It is not uncommon for veteran politicians, word-perfect public speakers, fluent radio announcers, experienced TV actors and commentators to inadvertently make preposterous mistakes when they come before the mike. Radio and TV announcers, whose pronunciation of words is generally flawless, can sometimes find themselves committing worst kind of bloopers or spoonerisms that make their listeners roll with laughter. Then, there are other media persons who sometimes become the laughing-stock of their listeners simply because they are blissfully unaware of the blunders they unwillingly commit while presenting their programmes on the radio or TV.

American multimedia producer Kermit Schafer took keen interest in bloopers and spoonerisms that took place on the radio and TV. Basically, a spoonerism is a funny play on words in which corresponding consonants, vowels, or morphemes are switched by the speaker, very often involuntarily. For instance under spoonerism ‘blow your nose’ becomes ‘know your blows’, ‘go and take a shower’ becomes ‘go and shake a tower’, ‘a crushing blow’ becomes ‘a blushing crow’, ‘our dear old Queen’ becomes ‘our queer old Dean’, ‘it’s pour¬ing with rain’ becomes ‘it’s roaring with pain’, and ‘four of Hearts’ gets transposed as ‘whore of farts’, All these are now considered gems of spoonerisms.

Kermit Schafer’s collection of such slips of the tongue- i.e. bloopers and spoonerisms- that he had heard on the radio and TV was made into a book titled ‘Your Slip Is Showing’. It was a huge commercial success. Sometimes media persons are so carried away by their own enthusiasm that they hardly take any note of what they are saying. A contestant participating in a TV game show introduced herself like this “I work as a maid for a large family, consisting of four boys, three girls, one adult, and one adulteress.” Here is another one that proves that words are like a double-edged sword that must be handled carefully. A TV game show contestant, perhaps having little inkling of how stand-up comedians were going to be beholden to him for supplying them this gem of a gaffe, was once heard saying, “I work for the Pittsburg Gas Company. At least 90 per cent of the people in Pittsburg have gas.”

Andrei, former Soviet foreign minister, was a serious-looking man with a nonsense approach to diplomatic affairs. Once at an official lunch, he chose to toast a female counterpart from some other country without seeking the help of interpreters. Confident of his own ability to handle the English language competently, he said with a flourish, “A toast to this gracious lady. Up your bottom!” instead of “Bottoms up”.

Many incidents happen to many people when we do have a tongue of slip, by that I mean slip of tongue, but then articles are only written when it happens to the famous lot. These days even in the end of movies, we have clips of shots taken when actors did some silly mistakes. We don’t mind a good laugh as long as it is in a positive note.