“I could barely finish”: Sandra Sully’s most embarrassing on-air moment
Television isn’t always all glitz and glamour, and as Sandra Sully knows, it can come with its fair share of embarrassment too.
Over the course of her decades in the industry, she’s braved no few memorable moments - the good and the bad - and during an appearance on the I’ve Got News For You podcast, she opened up about the most embarrassing of them all.
It was in 2007 that the sports team at Ten decided to run some footage from the day - without letting Sully in on their shenanigans - of when play was halted at the Australian PGA Tour by a kangaroo who had made its way onto the course, and decided to play with its own testicles in front of South Africa’s top golfer Rory Sabbatini.
“I would throw to sport and they always had a ‘play of the day’ and I generally got a chance to look at it,” Sully explained to I’ve Got News For You host Andrew Bucklow, “and for whatever reason, I was busy and they deliberately didn’t let me see it – they didn’t put it in the rundown.”
“It was international coverage, with the kangaroo, and the team at Sports Tonight put music to it with bells, ‘ding dong, ding dong’,” she added, “and I wasn’t expecting it.
“I could barely finish the bulletin.”
After airing the footage from the tour during their on-air segment, Sully and sports presenter Brad McEwan could be seen laughing at their desk, with Sully wheezing that she “can’t go on.”
As Sully tried to bring things back around to a more sensible footing, McEwan cracked a joke about it all, sending the pair into another round of giggles, before Sully steered them straight into the weather report - though it wasn’t all smooth sailing from there, with the newsreader barely able to get her words out through her own amusement, despite one “I don’t think I’ll forgive you” making it through.
Sully went on to explain things like that had happened “so many times” throughout her career, and that to go on in her industry, she really had “to have a sense of humour”.
And while humour is important to Sully, she admitted to Bucklow that nerves also factor in before each and every show, despite having so many years of experience under her belt.
“It’s not extreme nerves,” she said, “but there’s always a moment with about 10 seconds to go that, you know, there’s a mental register.
“You’re on a tightrope, and anything can go wrong. It’s live television.”
Images: Getty