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We all remember the classic BBC interview, fabulously gatecrashed by two kids during a segment discussing the South Korean president’s impeachment.
Thanks to the pandemic – and with many people working from home for the foreseeable future – we’ve seen even more moments of eye-watering family carnage played out in real-time. Within a few hours of each other, two live TV interviews were upstaged this week by young children wandering in as their parents were giving their expertise to Sky News and BBC News respectively.
Deborah Haynes, Sky News foreign affairs editor, was interrupted by her son (who wanted two – yes, that’s TWO – biscuits), while Dr Clare Wenham from the London School of Economics was waylaid by her daughter Scarlett, who wanted to know where she should place a framed picture… of a unicorn.
Aside from the bafflingly different responses of the male news presenters to these moments – one of them actively engaging with the unicorn dilemma, the other moving on from Biscuitgate as quickly as he possibly could – these “absolute scenes’ will be news to no working parent anywhere.
One mum on Twitter thanked Wenham and Haynes for showing what life’s really like for working parents at the moment. “As the increasingly frazzled working mum of a toddler who has become somewhat famous on video calls, I needed to see this today,” she wrote. “Carry on, everyone.”
Meanwhile, BBC 6Music breakfast host Lauren Laverne tweeted Wenham and her daughter to say: “Best bulletin in ages! Well done both of you!”
Plenty of parents were moved to shared their own WFH disruptions, including one dad, whose young son alerted him, mid Zoom call, to a desk disaster.
A surplus of poo, wee and vomit are basic facts of life for families of young children. Another mum-of-three, a writer, said the news clips reminded her of the time she was “crouched outside the bathroom door interviewing a professor of medical research and one of my kids did a big poo in the bath.”
A dad recounted his family’s version: “My wife had a team meeting video call,” he said. “I was supposed to be looking after the two girls. One escaped and crashed the call, shouting, ‘Mummy, Alice did a poo and it leaked!’”
We’ve all discovered lockdown comes with certain challenges – only recently, I found my foot being stuck to the floor with electrical tape by my three-year-old son, who said he was “trying to help me do my work”.
Another day, he clambered on to my lap during a catchup with the HuffPost newsroom to request – in front of my colleagues – that I make him “bum toast”. Just to be clear, this is pieces of buttered toast cut into circles using a cookie cutter, which he insists resembles ‘bums’. His dad was similarly interrupted during an annual performance review on Zoom by our boy running into the room, stark naked, to give him an “urgent kiss”.
But as many parents who watched the BBC and Sky clips of families juggling work and home life have pointed out, perhaps this exposure is good for us all.
As we’ve learned over the past few months, seeing into each other’s living rooms and lives – even, or especially, if that includes unicorns, biscuits and poo – is an invitation to us all to be more understanding of each other’s situations.
Plus it lightens the load a bit, puncturing those pandemic blues. “I was on an ‘important’ call recently when my daughter came to ask if huskies having blue eyes help them when working in the snow,” shared one mum.
“And it started a wonderful conversation with all on the call.”
