Tweet

Here is the latest in a series of examinations into urban legends about TV and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of the TV urban legends featured so far.

TV URBAN LEGEND: A British candid hidden camera show accidentally aired a man masturbating to a porno tape in his house live.

As the story goes, a candid hidden camera show for the BBC had a bit where they would place hidden cameras in various people’s homes (with permission of someone in the family, of course), and then, in a cued bit, the host would suddenly appear on their television and the audience would see their live reaction. In one instance, while the camera was on, a local man was home when his wife and kids went off to the store. To the horror of the BBC crew, the man proceeded to take out a porno tape, play it into his VCR and and masturbate to it on live television. The show supposedly quickly turned the feed off.

Is it true?

That’s how the story went, but the actual matter of it was that it happened on an episode of Noel Edmunds’ popular television show, Noel’s House Party.

Edmunds had many bits, including “NTV” (Noel TV) where the very thing that we mentioned before took place – someone in a family would set another family member up by a hidden camera in the house placed somewhere in their TV room then, while they were watching TV, Edmunds would suddenly appear on their TV, live, talking to them and we would see the person’s reaction. Not a bad bit.

Well, during this particular bit, it was a celebrity involved, TV and Radio host Chris Evans.

His wife set him up, but after doing so, she realized that he was watching the TV show Baywatch.

She knew that Evans typically began to masturbate when he watched Baywatch by himself, so she called the show and told them to cut the feed, and they did.

Evans appeared later on the show, and while he did not come right out and say, “Yeah, I was masturbating,” it was implied.

A little later on, Evans copped to the whole thing. He seemed to get a kick out of it all, really.

So yeah, the basic foundation of the story is essentially true, but it is exaggerated to the point of being a lot more sordid story than what it really was, which generally is how a lot of legends get started!

The legend is…

STATUS: False, with a lot of Truth mixed in.

Thanks to Mike Williams for a couple of corrections!

Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future urban legends columns! My e-mail address is bcronin@legendsrevealed.com