Lieutenant Commander Tommy Woodroofe leapt head-first into the history books with an absolutely unforgettable commentary on the illumination of the Royal fleet at Spithead in 1937.
Perhaps as a result of a little-too-much enthusiasm on Woodroofe's part, (or, perhaps, a little-too-much stupidity,) the radio broadcast listeners enjoyed exquisite blurbs of delightfully incoherent speech interrupted only by the dreaded 'dead-air' silences of up to 11 seconds in length.
Highlights of the broadcast are as follows:
"At the present moment, the whole fleet is lit up. When I say 'lit up' I mean lit up by fairy lamps. It's fantastic. It isn't a fleet at all. It's just... It's fairyland. The whole fleet is in fairyland. Now, if you'll follow me through... if you don't mind... the next few moments you'll find the fleet doing odd things."
(Insert a lengthy pause here. Go grab a sandwich while you're waiting.)
"I'm sorry. I was telling some people to shut up talking."
At this moment, the fleet's lights were all turned out in order to allow the shore-side spectators the best possible view of the fireworks that would soon follow.
Unfortunately, someone neglected to tell Tommy:
"It's gone! It's gone! There's no fleet! It's... It's disappeared! No magician who ever could have waved his hand could have waved it with more acumen than he has now at the present moment. The fleet's gone. It's disappeared.
"I was talking to you in the middle of this damn... (coughs) in the middle of this fleet and what's happened is the fleet's gone and disappeared and gone!"
(Imagine if Woodroofe had been reporting during the landing of the Hindenburg!)
Woodroofe's words quickly faded into silence as producers scrambled to rescue themselves from disaster. An announcer quickly came on the air stating: "That is the end of the Spithead commentary." A pleasant selection of dance music then returned some sanity to the listeners.
In defense of his disastrous initiation to radio broadcasting, Lieutenant Commander Woodroofe explained that he had been 'overcome by emotion'.
