BBC NEWS | Radio 4 news hit by giggling fit

Hundreds of listeners have contacted BBC Radio 4 after newsreader Charlotte Green dissolved into giggles while reading a bulletin on Today.She lost control after playing a clip of the oldest known recording of the human voice.

Charlotte Green has my sympathy – as someone who used to read news bulletins I know the dreadful feeling when a fit of the giggles interrupts your normally sedate reading voice.

The one that I recall most vividly was when I was reading a piece of copy, “North Yorkshire dinner ladies were toasted for winning an employment tribunal case over equal pay”. My imagination played riot with the idea of toasted dinner ladies.