Guy Goma | Hacker News Reader

Guy Goma

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129 pointswidforss11 comments

I heard about the story from the Guy Kewney side of this. Apparently the BBC had two areas for visitors and the assistant went to the wrong one and asked for "Guy".

Sadly Guy passed a few years ago his blog https://hunkymouse.livejournal.com/ goes through his fight against cancer.

He was one of those folks who I'd bump into occasionally at London tech events and I still miss him.

The interview:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e6Y2uQn_wvc

He really did a rather remarkable job for someone who had all of 10 seconds to realize that he was being interviewed on live television. I suspect a lot of people wouldn’t have managed to stay as cool as he did. I know I wouldn’t.

That’s so hard to watch because I can only imagine being in his seat. It’s literally the stuff of nightmares, right up with “I have to ace this final exam in a class I forgot I had”. If I ever find myself in that situation, I hope I can get through it with half the grace and aplomb that Goma managed.

I love how you can see on his face that he starts to protest, then probably figures he'll embarrass people and so tries his best.

In his second or third language no less.

He should try pentest, he has a natural talent for going with the flow.

Having read this, I now realize a bit in the Abicada-bra episode of the IT Crowd was a parody of this incident.

An interview challenge turns out to be the actual job, just without compensation? I guess the media and software industries are not so different after all :)

I remember this happening and it going viral, very amusing at the time, and reading about the comedy of errors that led up to it is even better.

I'd imagine processes at broadcasters got a lot more stringent after this (i.e. verifying full name and probably photo as well)

This interview was meant to be with a big hero of mine, and later a friend, noted UK computer journalist Guy Kewney.

It was not funny for him. He was watching in the green room, and was furious. It was a major blow to his freelance career.

It's not really funny. It terrified Guy G, and it severely hurt Guy K financially, and his ability to support his family. It was a very rough time for all of us freelance journos; I had to give it up a few years later, go become a TEFL teacher, which led me to moving to Central Europe -- i.e. the former Communist Bloc -- where I could afford to live

Guy K died of bowel cancer a few years later.

So, this is a painful memory, not a funny one, for some of us.

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