8 of the biggest GB News mishaps from channel’s first week on air – from prank names to someone’s backside

GB News, the newest news broadcaster in the UK, launched on Sunday evening and so far things have been interesting, to say the least.

Talk of the right-leaning ‘anti woke’ channel came about in late 2020 following the revelation that Andrew Neil was leaving the BBC after 25 years.

This new non-politically correct channel was described by commentators as a UK alternative to Fox News – a comparison Neil doesn’t like – where presenters and contributors could speak freely without being reprimanded. It doesn’t show rolling news but is more of a comment space where they will read out the thoughts of viewers and feature man guest contributors.

Although it has tried to stick to that mantra, that has possibly been the least talked about element of the channel, which seems to be struggling to get anything right.

There has been the odd controversy but, more noticeably, GB News has fallen prey to numerous pranks and technical issues that make it look considerably amateur and nothing even close to the output seen across the pond on Fox.

After just seven days, GB News has racked up scores of embarrassing moments. Here are some that left us with our head in our hands.

Prank names

Perhaps the biggest and most consistent gaffe that has befallen GB News is a Simpsons-like gag of people using fake names as crude puns. You can imagine this sort of thing happens all the time but GB News has fallen foul to names including Mike Hunt, Mike Oxlong, Hugh Janus and Cleo Torez. Oh dear...

Veteran newsreader Simon McCoy was not impressed.

Lady Colin Campbell claims Jeffery Epstein wasn’t a paedophile

Perhaps the most controversial moment on the channel so far was when Lady Colin Campbell claimed that the deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who has links to Prince Andrew, wasn’t a paedophile but was in fact an ‘ephebophile’ – aka someone who is attracted to teenagers aged between 15 and 19. She then went to make several accusations against Bill Clinton.

The studio

GB News is based in Paddington, London but unlike This Morning or BBC Breakfast, there is no indication to where they are actually located. In fact their studio looks more like a conference room in an office and is so dimly light and surrounded by dark colours that it is often hard to make out what is going on. Also, their interview space looks more like something from a cheap Star Wars knockoff. Viewers have, of course, have noticed.

Alan Sugar

One of the stations first guest was Lord Alan Sugar who was interviewed by Dan Wootton on his regular nightly show. However, The Apprentice host wasn’t in any way enthusiastic about the questions he was being asked and actually called Wootton “stupid.”

Ofcom complaints

On Wootton’s first show on the channel, the former showbiz journalist and executive editor of The Sun went on a rant criticising the further extensions of coronavirus restrictions across the UK. “It’s increasingly clear now that there is a move among some public health officials and politicians to create an ultra-cautious biosecurity state, copying the likes of China,” the 38-year-old complained. This resulted in 373 complaints being made to Ofcom. Not a great look for literally the stations first few hours on the air.

Technical problems

The channel has experienced a raft of technical failures. Literally everything from the sound being out of sync, the ticker along the bottom not working, DIY going on in the background and autocues breaking down. You name it, it’s already happened on GB News. The Twitter account GB News Fails has been doing a sterling effort of documenting all of these. Here are some highlights – or should we say lowlights.

We could honestly post hundreds of these.

Andrew Neil’s monologue

GB News launched on Sunday 13th June with a monologue from Neil who claimed that the channel will be reporting on the “views and values” that make up the United Kingdom and the “people’s agenda” and not the “metropolitan mindset.” Neil also claimed that GB News would not be pushing “fake narratives” or “conspiracy theories.” This came just an hour before the Wootton segment about lockdowns that warranted so many complaints. This, combined with the strange saturation and the sound being out of sync, made for quite an eye-opening first segment

Someone got their bum out

The biggest bum note so far on GB News has to be when Cultaholic’s Adam Pacitti sent a video into Wootton for his interview with former London mayoral candidate Laurence Fox. What anyone at GB News failed to notice was that Pacitti had his bum out and could clearly be seen in the mirror behind him.

All that, after just one week. Things can only get better, right?