Annette Sharp: Carrie Bickmore’s husband Chris Walker’s accidental nudity exposes rubbery rules

When Carrie Bickmore’s husband Chris Walker accidentally exposed himself on a work conference call, he also laid bare the inconsistencies within the media on governance of such issues, writes Annette Sharp.

He is the Danny Moder to Carrie Bickmore’s Julia Roberts. The Stedman Graham to her Oprah Winfrey.

And until a week ago, as with many celebrity spouses, this writer had barely given Bickmore’s little-known husband Chris Walker a moment’s thought.

And then he did it — he leapt out from behind his more famous wife’s protective and towering shadow, and inadvertently exposed himself to staff during a work-related video conference call.

Bugger. What an introduction.

Accidental though it may have been, it’s a gaffe that likely will not easily be set aside — as Walker’s contracted employer the ABC is clearly hoping it might be — and can never be expunged from Walker’s public record.

Chris Walker and wife Carrie Bickmore. Picture: carriebickmore/Instagram

For those of you who perhaps missed the story, it emerged in this paper’s Melbourne sister publication The Herald Sun recently that Walker had been conference calling his work colleagues from Europe, where he, Bickmore and the couple’s three children have, since April, been on a working tour enjoying the sights of Austria, Switzerland, France and the UK.

Like Bickmore, Walker is also a TV industry veteran.

He is the co-creator and executive producer of the ABC’s surprise hit Hard Quiz, hosted by Tom Gleeson, and The Weekly with Charlie Pickering.

His mistake occurred while Walker was participating in an online production meeting for The Weekly on May 17. He had dialled in for it remotely using his laptop.

As the meeting drew to a close he decided to shower and stripped off his pyjamas while as many as nine stunned and appalled staff sitting in a darkened control room at the ABC’s Melbourne HQ observed.

We hear there was nowhere for the ABC staff to hide when Walker’s naked body and penis appeared onscreen on a 1.5m studio monitor for up to two minutes.

The Weekly host Charlie Pickering has been strangely quiet about his boss’s indiscretion. Picture: ABC

The ABC has been virtually silent on the subject since, although it did confirm the transmission was unintentional, and advised that counselling had been offered to employees traumatised by the incident, of which there are reportedly some.

The incident highlights the inconsistencies within the media on governance of such issues.

Had Walker knowingly exposed himself, he would have lost his job.

His accidental exposure is considered, however, to be forgivable — even though he works in a highly competitive and professional medium in which no greater importance can be placed on the power of live images and of the responsibility of those transmitting them.

We imagine Walker’s job has been saved by the fact he works for the light entertainment/comedy department at the ABC and not for its news department.

The rules are rubbery on the subject around the globe, as Jeffrey Toobin found in 2020.

Toobin, CNN’s chief legal analyst and a prominent American writer, was handed two separate and opposite consequences when he accidentally exposed himself to colleagues during a Zoom conference call in October 2020.

While Conde Nast, publisher of The New Yorker for which Toobin wrote, sacked him after he was accidentally caught masturbating on camera, the more liberal CNN merely sidelined Toobin for several months and welcomed him back with open arms in 2021.

Meanwhile, Walker’s mistake will make for great material for put-down master Gleeson and Pickering.

Oddly, neither comedy host has passed comment or made a joke about their boss’s indiscretion during recent days, even though Pickering’s Wednesday program was, as usual, stuffed with gags at the expense of other hapless Australians doing less offensive things.

The ABC wouldn’t be drawn yesterday on the “measures” it claims to have taken this far to ensure it doesn’t happen to anyone else again.

An Antony Green “The Swing Is On” ABC sticker on the camera lens perhaps?

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