GB News presenter Anne Diamond forced to apologise to viewers after being hauled off-air
GB News presenter Anne Diamond was forced to apologise to viewers after an incident that saw her taken off air for a quarter of an hour.
Diamond, 70, was co-hosting with Stephen Dixon this morning (Sunday, August 3), as the pair discussed new government plans to impose prison sentences on those helping migrants cross the English Channel.
They were reading viewer reactions when one message read: “The moment anybody gets five years for selling illegal documents to immigrants, I will eat my hat.”
Diamond responded with a light comment - then the screen suddenly went black. Although the news ticker kept running, the presenters disappeared.
In their place, a random reel of old segments played, including one with Cameron Walker covering Queen Elizabeth’s memorial at St James’ Park, and another featuring Eamonn Holmes and Ellie Costello’s interview with David Mason, a British expat injured in a missile strike in Haifa.
The technical error lasted about 13 minutes before Diamond and Dixon returned. The presenters admitted they had no idea what caused the outage.
Dixon said: “It's technology which has just gone slightly potty.”
Diamond added: “I don't think, as many people have been saying, it's a political conspiracy but we'll keep an eye on that just in case.
“If you have been kicking your television and wondering what the heck is going on, we do apologise. For some reason we fell off air and we don't know why.”