Beware the BBC

Boy, some days it’s embarrassing just to go to work.

D. is enjoying cycling to work, now that he’s figured out where to safely store his bike during the day, and the seven minute commute is much nicer than the fifteen it takes him on foot! He had locked up his bike and had just slipped into one of the Elevators of Excruciating Speed with his helmet under his arm.

When we lived across the street from D’s office, he could leave home and still take ten minutes to arrive at his desk because of the elevators. They’re incredibly slow, and since Skypark has nine stories and about fifty offices for six or eight companies in that amount of space, those four elevators are completely booked first thing in the morning. The stop at every floor and people get on and get off, and it can take FORever to get just from the garage to the first floor, there are so many people heading inside and up. And then there are the people going down, who just wanted to toss their briefcase at their desk and then go back downstairs for a coffee before going back up to settle in. (You hope no one does that, but you know they do. Where are all the people going down at 9:30 a.m. doing otherwise?!)

This morning, D. was lucky to get a nearly empty car — just a few people, a guy with some camera equipment, and — well, we’ll let his text message speak for itself:

The BBC is doing a candid-camera type thing, where they have a girl in the elevator with her skirt tucked into the back of her tights. They want to see people’s reactions, and to know about whether they were embarrassed. Well, I noticed it immediately, as she kinda turned around to face the exit doors, and I told her, “Excuse me, miss. Your skirt is completely tucked into the back of your tights.” They filmed this, of course, and interviewed me afterward as well, and interviewed the girl – we were both blushing, me because it was … well, embarrassing to be told that I was blushing, which made it worse, and she, because she felt bad for what she was doing to me, I think – she felt badly for putting me into an embarrassing position.

Remember, this all took place in the Elevators of Excruciating Irritation. So, you see a girl with a wardrobe malfunction, and she backs into a wall and tugs at her clothes, and you… look away and hum to yourself while the elevator hums along to the next floor and stops. And the next. And the next…

It’ll be broadcast on The One Show, at some point. We’ll have to catch it on BBC’s iPlayer, more than likely, as we haven’t yet decided we want to spend anything on a TV.

The whole thing reminded T. immediately of last February’s exciting episode where D. and Van were walking home and a woman opened her umbrella and launched a paper-wrapped feminine item that almost smacked Van in the face. To speak, or, not to speak? That is, apparently, the question…

– D & T

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.