Cameraman forced to cut away after woman flashes knickers and accosts presenter

Behind pretty much every live TV broadcast is someone who has got to be as on the ball as possible to avoid things going wrong in a way that ends up with clips being shared on the internet and then written about, like we're doing right now.

Don't worry, the person who was in charge of the Sky Sports coverage of horse racing at Lingfield, we're here to say you did as good a job as could be expected under the circumstances.

It started out pretty normally, Martin Kelly was in the studio and chatting to former jockey Mick Fitzgerald who was on location.

Then a member of the public decided they'd do the classic 'start interacting with the TV presenter while they're live' routine.

Sky Sports

A lady moved into shot and started leaning on Fitzgerald before she put her arm around him and stuck out her tongue at the camera.

The former jockey handled it like a pro, barely even breaking his stride although viewers could tell he was engaged in a battle to maintain his composure as he couldn't help but smile at the disruption.

While it initially looked like the briefest of interruptions as the woman moved out of shot again the broadcast was then briefly interrupted in another sense as she showed up again behind Mick and lifted up her dress in an attempt to flash her knickers.

Fortunately for Sky Sports racing fans their pearls could stay unclutched and letters of complaint unwritten as Fitzgerald was able to block most of what was happening from the camera's view and Sky cut back to Martin Kelly in the studio soon afterwards to avoid further incident.

However, they didn't quite cut away quickly enough as Mick was trying to say something important about the rainfall at the racecourse and the woman decided to come right up behind him and shout: "I'm so wet!"

Sky

Clearly realising it was probably for the best to pass things back to the studio, Fitzgerald managed to end the interaction with a decent quip to relieve the tension.

He said: "I'm really sorry about that, it is live television Martin but I'm sure her mum will be pleased when she sees that."

The viewers at home were pretty impressed with the way Fitzgerald handled the whole situation, saying the former jockey 'handled it well' even if they thought they saw him blushing and dubbed it 'priceless'.

It's one of the perils of live TV, if you're going in front of the camera and the people around you twig that what they say and do is going to end up right on the telly then the chances of them doing something daft is quite high.

Once again, spare a thought for the poor soul in some control room in a studio who has to figure out how to deal with this on the fly.

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