angelophile | He used to be a taxi driver, but found he couldn't hack it

IT WAS not until midway through a live television interview that the BBC interviewer started to grow suspicious. The man whom she believed to be an expert on internet music downloads seemed to know precious little about his subject.

The corporation’s News 24 channel apologised to its viewers yesterday and admitted that its interviewee was not Guy Kewney, the respected editor of Newswireless.net, but a local taxi driver.

The cabbie, who is better qualified to talk about traffic jams in Shepherds Bush, answered questions for several minutes on Apple Computer’s victory at the High Court against Apple Corps, the record label for the Beatles, The Times has learnt.

Karen Bowerman, the BBC’s consumer affairs correspondent, asked the driver what the implications were for Apple Computer, which is allowed to continue using its name and symbol for its iTunes music download service. He gave a rambling answer about how people would be able to download songs at internet cafés.

Ms Bowerman was nonplussed, but persisted. What about Apple? “I don’t know,” the driver replied. “I’m not at all sure what I’m doing here.”

It emerged that the driver had been waiting for a client at the BBC Television Centre in West London, when a studio manager mistook him for the expert.

Confused but co-operative, he agreed to follow the manager to a studio, where he was promptly fitted with a microphone and placed in front of a camera.

Mr Kewney, meanwhile, was still waiting in reception when he saw the taxi driver being introduced under his name. “Anybody would have been fascinated to see me introduced live on air, as the expert witness in the studio,” he wrote on his weblog. “Me? Not fascinated; astonished! What would you feel, if, while you were sitting in that rather chilly reception area, you suddenly saw yourself — not sitting in reception, but live, on TV?” He was amused at first, but realised that anyone watching would think he knew next to nothing about Apple Computer, online music or The Beatles.

When the driver was asked how the interview went, he replied: “Well, it was OK, but I was a bit rushed.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2178097,00.html