We all make mistakes at work, but when you’re a Radio 1 producer, they may be significant, as Chris Sawyer discovered.
On Greg James’ broadcast on Tuesday morning, the BBC Radio 1 Breakfast co-producer detected an unfortunate gaffe.
He had made a ‘typo’ in the title of one of Avicii’s tracks, which was apparent to the 4.65 million listeners who may tune in.
Chris had composed ‘Silooettes’ instead of Silhouettes, a song by the late Swedish singer published in 2012.
‘I made a spelling mistake at work today,’ he wrote, sharing pictures of the mistake and follow-up texts from listeners.
Chris joked: ‘But I apologised in the exact same place I made the mistake, so everyone forgave me. The end.’
Songs are often stored in a system that automatically populates the title and artist for each track; however, not all songs are included in the playlist.
The issue occurred during Greg’s 10-minute takeover, during which listeners can request whatever music they wish to hear.
Because Silhouettes is an older song that wasn’t already on the system, Chris had to rapidly put in the metadata before the music began.
Listeners immediately caught up on the blunder and began writing in to laugh about it with Greg, so Chris took to the song title slot once more to apologise.
‘Sorry for the spelling mistake – Chris,’ appeared on screens, apparently as a new hit track by Zara Larsson.
His amusing apology was effective, as he offered a sample of some of the replies he received from listeners.
‘You’re forgiven producer Chris,’ wrote Lydia in Cyprus, while another said: ‘Apology accepted Chris.’
‘We’ll let you off’, responded two listeners including ‘Eric the trucker’.
We’re not sure if presenter Greg forgave him, but how could you be furious with such a hilarious resolution – waiting for Zara’s song to drop now!
