BBC News’ Simon McCoy has once again raised a smile when we needed it most. 

The newsreader slipped in an incredible – but also very subtle – pun as he informed viewers about an out-of-control metro train that careered off the rails but landed safely in a whale sculpture in the Netherlands on Monday.

He introduced images that showed the vehicle suspended in the whale’s tail in Rotterdam, several metres off the ground.

As he went to move on to the next item, Simon then said in his typically dead-pan manner: “Latest pictures there from Dutch whale-ways.”

Incredible. 

The company that operates the metro line said the driver was uninjured and there were no passengers on the train when it crashed through stop barriers at the end of the station in the town of Spijkenisse, on the southern edge of Rotterdam. 

Simon’s unique take on certain news stories have made headlines of their own on a number of occasions over the years. 

Just last week, he made a savage dig at a family who had developed a Covid-friendly device to deliver sweets to Trick Or Treaters over Halloween. 

In 2013, he reported on the upcoming birth of Prince George saying: “Plenty more to come from here… none of it news.”

He also provided some first-rate dead-pan narration over footage from the World Dog Surfing Championships in California, which ended with him declaring: “That’s a shame, we have run out of pictures.”