ITV continuity announcer’s hilarious blooper as he calls Parliament Buildings ‘Storm Front’
It’s had many monikers over the years from ‘Stormount’ to ‘The House on the Hill’, but TV viewers were in stitches recently when a continuity announcer referred to Parliament Buildings as ‘Storm Front’.
The Freudian slip occurred when the English-voiced announcer introduced UTV’s View from Stormont on Monday evening. But instead of saying ‘Stormont’, he unwittingly introduced the show, hosted by Paul Clarke, as ‘View from Storm Front’.
The hilarious blooper was instantly doing the rounds on social media, with one Twitter user writing: “View from “Storm Front” - had to listen to this twice to make sure I was hearing it right.”
Another wrote: “ITV announcer introducing View from Stormont announcing it as View from Storm Front. Does he know something.”
It’s not the first time ‘non-Norn Irish’ television presenters have struggled with local names.
The town of Maghera is often referred to as ‘Ma-gear-a’; whilst Portglenone is sometimes called ‘Port-glen-one’ and Craigavon, ‘Craig-avon’.
In April, local continuity announcements and branding between programmes were suspended to reduce risk and minimise the number of people in the Belfast office. ITV said that the changes had worked well and had decided to make the modifications permanent. It said continuity announcements will continue to be provided centrally, meaning local continuity announcers were no longer needed.
In November, UTV announced that veteran continuity presenter Julian Simmons was leaving the station. Larger-than-life Julian had been a fixture at UTV for years, and was much-loved for his gossipy style introductions to Coronation Street and Emmerdale.
Commenting on the Storm front mistake, an ITV spokesperson said: “We’d like to apologise for the continuity error last night before View from Stormont. This was human error and we have reviewed procedures to ensure that this won’t happen again. “