Carrie Bickmore’s biggest bloopers in 10 years of The Project
Carrie Bickmore’s endured car-crash interviews and technical difficulties on The Project — but one X-rated blooper topped them all.
As the sole remaining original panellist on The Project after 10 years on air, Carrie Bickmore’s endured her fair share of awkward on-air bloopers.
Who could forget the time she casually dropped the C-bomb while reading the 7pm news bulletin?
That was back in 2012, Bickmore stumbling over the word “Qantas” while reading the news and somehow pronouncing it “C***as”, collapsing in a fit of giggles as co-host Charlie Pickering quipped: “That web address you’ll need is youtube.com …”
Bickmore tweeted an apology after the blunder: “Any publicity is good publicity right??!! Sorry @qantasairways and my nan.”
That’s just one of the hilariously off-script Bickmore moments you probably won’t find on the Gold Logie winner’s professional show reel — but which Ten provided to news.com.au this week in the form of a blooper reel to mark The Project’s 10th anniversary (watch the full reel in the video player above).
There was her cringe-worthy opening question during a 2009 interview with crooner Michael Buble, Bickmore channelling Kath Day-Knight to declare she was “hot for” the singer and informing him he was her “celebrity hall pass”.
Opening a celebrity interview by announcing you want to shag the interviewee? 2009 was truly a different time …
Then there was a car-crash 2013 interview with Sex Pistols star John Lydon, the veteran rocker bellowing at Bickmore via satellite to keep quiet when she dared ask him a question. “Hey missus, SHUT UP. Whoever you are, SHUT UP. Now listen: When a man is talking, do not interrupt,” he shouted.
Bickmore held her ground, smiling and responding patiently as one would to a toddler mid-tantrum.
But as Bickmore explained to news.com.au in an interview published yesterday, she doesn’t shy away from the inevitable bloopers that come with working on live TV — rather, she thrives on them.
Asked to nominate her favourite-ever episode of the show, Bickmore immediately picked one in which everything that could go wrong did.
“About five minutes before we went to air — it was Fitzy, Waleed, Pete and I — they said ‘We’ve lost everything. We’ve got no autocue, no packages to roll, we’ve got nothing’. We looked at each other and I said, ‘Let’s act out the news’.
“I picked up my sheet and went through the news headlines — I had to be careful not to pick ones where there was no joy in them — and we started acting them out. It was completely random, no prep, flying by the seat of our pants. It wasn’t a slick performance, but it was live TV at its best.”
And after 10 years on The Project — and her fair share of awkward TV moments — Bickmore says she’s in no hurry to leave the program that’s made her a household name.
“I don’t know how much longer I’ve got to go — I’m just thankful for the current scenario I’m in. I love it. It might not be right forever, but right now it’s right. I’m actually really proud that I’ve been doing it for 10 years, and I’m the last remaining original. I’m proud of that!” she said.