Guy Goma when he realized he was live on the BBC.
With Apple and the Beatles in the mix, Guy Goma didn’t sign up for anything that happened to him on May 8, 2006. Suddenly he was on television, live on the BBC.
More than 20 years after it became one of the Internet’s most iconic moments, the BBC’s “wrong analyst” episode continues to be remembered and shared on social media.
On May 8, 2006, the Congolese Guy Goma went to the BBC headquarters in West London, United Kingdom, for a job interview for the IT department.
By mistake, he was confused with another Guy, Guy Kewney, a British journalist specializing in technology. And the worst was about to happen.
Guy (Goma, not Kewney as the BBC thought) was taken to the BBC News 24 studio, where, sitting and confused, already in front of the cameras, he was informed quite naturally that he was about to go live.
Visibly surprised and nervous, Goma was introduced as a guest and despite not being the expert who should be interviewed, he answered questions from center Karen Bowerman about the future of downloads, in the context of a dispute between Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) and Apple Corps, the publisher associated with the Beatles, related to trademark rights. The journalist never noticed anything was wrong.
Although completely unprepared to comment on the topic, his answers would come to be seen, years later, as surprisingly accurate. At the time, 2006, access to Facebook was beginning to expand beyond the university universe and Netflix had not yet started home streaming (which would start the following year).
“In fact, if you go anywhere, you will see a lot of people downloading things through the Internet and the website, whatever they want,” he said, adding: “It will be an easy way for everyone to get something through the Internet.”
But 17 years later, the moment is no longer comical. Guy Goma sued the BBC in 2023 because he considered that that day’s blunder “made the station richer”, while the taxi driver who was simply looking for a new opportunity at the BBC “did not receive a single cent” in compensation for the public humiliation.
Goma complained to the podcast that he never received royalties from the video that gathered millions of views nor a payment for the failed interview. From the BBC, he complained, he never received a response.
However, Goma was entitled to one thing: the long-awaited job interview. But he didn’t get the place. He said on the podcast that it was because “he was already famous” because of the video.
