Top 10 Live Call In Disasters

Top 10 Live Call-In Disasters

Welcome to WatchMojoUK, and today we’re looking at the most absurd live call-ins on radio and television.

#10: Polls

This bloke was furious, calling in to give Mike Graham a piece of his mind after he said he didn’t like and didn’t trust polls. It was all a big misunderstanding, though. Graham was talking about opinion polls with two “Ls”, but the caller thought that he meant Poles as in Polish people. To be fair, if any TV presenter was being openly bigoted like that on television, it would be great to see a member of the public take them down. But that’s not what happened. Though the caller doesn’t back down immediately, the misunderstanding is soon cleared up. It is strange, though, that the producers put the call through to Graham instead of dealing with it off-air. 

#9: Sausage Rolls

The Tories have had a lot of run-ins with Greggs, the UK’s most popular bakery chain largely favoured by the working class. Back in 2012, George Osborne infamously wanted to introduce a “sausage roll tax” when he tried to impose VAT on hot takeaways. But in 2019, Boris Johnson claimed that he was a huge fan of Greggs and went there all the time. He then went on LBC where Nick Ferrari refreshed his memory on his own comments, and then asked the then-prime minister how much a sausage roll costs. Unsurprisingly, Boris floundered, guessing blindly that a sausage roll costs £1.90. As we all know, he was wrong.

#8: Prank Calls

These bizarre incidents plagued “The Wright Stuff” in January 2018, when an unidentified man repeatedly called the show to deliver messages to his ex, Sharon. He disguised his voice and apparently had additional burner phones on hand just to accomplish this, as he kept getting onto the show. Every time, he started by engaging with the on-air debate, and then quickly changed course to call Sharon, a fan of the show, profanities. Wright apologised numerous times and even threatened that if he kept at it, Channel 5 might take them off-air. Poor Sharon, whoever she is.

#7: Prince Andrew

In 2019, just days after “Newsnight” aired its extraordinary interview with Andrew, James O’Brien managed to find the only people left in Britain who were still fans of him. The first woman, identified as Muffy, rang into LBC to correct O’Brien on various things, like how he should still be using Andrew’s proper HRH title despite the scandal. But she kept defending him, too; she said that O’Brien himself must have friends who have made mistakes, apparently assuming that we’re all befriending nonces and overlooking everything they do. He kept getting bizarre calls, though, with three different people saying that Andrew was being unfairly judged.  

#6: Liz Truss

The former prime minister herself was technically doing all the calling in on this fateful day in 2022, but the BBC radio presenters got plenty of messages from the public to put to her. It was very unfortunate for Truss that her crashing of the economy coincided with the annual Tory Party Conference, when she was wheeled out for the traditional BBC local radio blitz. This certainly wasn’t the biggest disaster Liz Truss caused, but it definitely didn’t help things – particularly not her career, as she broke records as the most unpopular prime minister in history, according to those polls Mike Graham hates.

#5: Anti-Woke

Just what does it mean to be woke or anti-woke these days? Well, don’t ask this caller, because he didn’t seem to know, either, despite describing himself as such. James O’Brien gave him all the airtime he needed to explain his ideas and the country listened to him struggle in real time. He was complaining about being made to go on courses to learn about wokeness but couldn’t give a concrete answer of what those courses were or what they were supposed to do. Over and over again, he refused to elaborate, tripping over himself and saying that if he did say what he meant, he’d be called a fascist, and that he was being silenced.

#4: Suella Braverman

Though she didn’t lose her seat in the 2024 election, Suella Braverman still seems to be angling for some kind of media career, and decided she’d have a go at presenting LBC. It probably won’t surprise you to hear that this didn’t go down well. She might still be an MP, but that doesn’t make her popular, particularly for her extremely right-wing views on immigration. Specifically, this was about the botched Rwanda plan, revealed by the Labour Party to have cost the country hundreds of millions of pounds when they took power, deporting exactly four people. How did she think it was going to go if she took over from James O’Brien and got his usual listeners calling in?

#3: Trump’s Biggest Fan

James O’Brien must be a magnet for weirdos, because in yet another memorable LBC moment, he was called up by Donald Trump’s #1 fan in the UK. Yes, though it’s difficult to imagine any Brit describing themselves as a fan of Trump, this man existed – unless he just really loved the American version of “The Apprentice”. This was in 2021, right after the January insurrection, and O’Brien was talking about how he believes Trump claiming that Barack Obama wasn’t born in America is racist. This prompted the caller to say that white presidents had also been accused of not being born in America. But could he name those presidents? Of course not. In the end, he got so angry that he hung up.

#2: Sex Education

You’d be forgiven for thinking this baffling moment was a prank call, but apparently not. Nick Ferrari helmed a phone-in with a member of the public concerned with sex education in schools – namely, that it wasn’t being taught properly to teenagers. He regaled the country with an anecdote about his teenage son being taught about sex using some common household foods. His son was very understandably confused about this, and it’s especially confounding when you try to imagine what role the Nutella was playing in the simulated act. We can only hope that the other kids in the class asked their parents to clarify, since we’ve no idea what this teacher was on.

#1: Concrete

This wasn’t exactly a phone-in, since Cameron was an expert TalkTV had decided to bring on to talk about environmental protests. But it still remains the most absurd moment from Mike Graham’s entire media career, as he asked Cameron, a carpenter by trade, why trees are sustainable when concrete isn’t. He tries to say that it’s wrong to chop down trees, but Cameron simply pointed out that trees can be planted and regrown. Graham infamously doubled-down, but when it was pointed out how wrong he was, either the studio or Cameron himself hung up. It was very strange, and Graham has continued to defend himself, waiting years for some research to come out that seemed to prove he was right. 

Let us know in the comments if you’ve ever phoned into a radio or TV show.