The normally austere tones of the 8 o'clock news on BBC Radio 4's Today programme were replaced by fits of hilarity this morning when a newsreader was unable to stop laughing after hearing a clip of an old sound recording.
Charlotte Green had just finished reading an item about what appeared to be the earliest recording of the human voice, made in 1860, when she fell into an uncontrollable fit of laughter from which she was unable to recover.
The giggles were triggered by a recording of the French song Au Clair De La Lune, unearthed by American scientists, that was apparently made 11 years before Thomas Edison first demonstrated the gramophone. The strange, scarcely audible, wail was too much for Ms Green, who was unable to recover her composure and broke down intermittently during the next item: a report on the death of the esteemed screenwriter Abby Mann.
After an initial chuckle for which she apologised, Ms Green embarked on the story about Mann, who won the Oscar for best screenplay in 1961, but began laughing again almost immediately, apparently prompted by someone else in the studio. By the time she was recounting the fact that Mann had won several awards for his work, which included the script for the film Judgment at Nuremberg, she was laughing loudly, and soon after she had to stop completely, leaving an awkward silence. She was finally rescued by James Naughtie, the Today presenter, who launched into a report about Iraq.
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