Is This Guy the Worst Television Presenter of All Time?
Meet Ortis Deley! Deley, despite what this video would have you believe, is a professional broadcaster—for the last two years he's hosted The Gadget Show—and he was, until this week, the main presenter of Channel 4's coverage of the World Athletics Championsips. Why did he get fired? Well!
In the course of a few hapless days, Deley repeatedly stumbled over the names of star athletes ("the Honourable Leo Usain Bolt") and his trackside commentators. He called Oscar Pistorius, the South African double-amputee "the fastest man on no legs".
He invented events ("the men's 100-metre hurdles"), forgot commercial breaks, missed links, paused for long moments to consult his script, corrected himself endlessly, asked his studio guest – the four-times Olympic gold medal-winning sprinter, Michael Johnson – whether he was a pole vaulter, and concluded one broadcast with the memorable sign-off: "So we have a gloriously sunny day here in the studio. We've seen some action this morning as well. Jessica Ennis. Good night."
We're taking The Guardian's word for it, because we couldn't make it through more than half of the video above before we had to go bury our head in a pillow out of embarrassment.
