Broadcaster Emma Freud has been forced to apologise after making a huge blunder live on radio.
In a not so Freudian slip, the journalist left Archers fans enraged after she ‘blurted out’ a long-running plot line before some viewers had a chance to listen to the episode.
Emma’s blunder came when she was invited on the Radio 4’s Today news bulletin earlier this month to talk about her new Archers Podcast.
During the interview, she let slip that wayward teenager George Grundy, played by Angus Stobie, had been jailed for three years in the previous evening’s show.
Despite presenter Amol Rajan warning 62-year-old Emma about revealing ‘spoilers’, she ignored him and ploughed on, saying: ‘That is not my problem.’
128aj) Richard Curtis and Emma Freud 16th Annual Oscar Wilde Awards, Los Angeles, California, USA on March 24, 2022
Characters in the Radio 4 show The Archers – the show which broadcaster Emma Freud has had to apologise to viewers for spoiling
She has now told the BBC‘s Feedback programme: ‘This was a genuine mistake. I am so sorry.’
However, many of the soap’s five million listeners who had planned to tune in when the episode was repeated the following lunchtime were furious.
One branded her ‘selfish’ while another told the Mail they were ‘gutted’.
There were more angry comments on Radio 4’s Feedback programme on Thursday with one fan saying: ‘She should have been promoting the programme not ruining it.’
Another complained: ‘Emma Freud ruined everything for me. I was horrified.’
Presenter Andrea Catherwood said that Emma’s comments had gone down ‘like a bucket of Ed Grundy’s homebrew with many listeners’.
Then she played a contrite message from Emma, whose great grandfather was the psychoanalyst Sigmund, saying: ‘This was a genuine mistake.’
Emma, who claims to be an Archers superfan, explained she had ‘foolishly assumed’ she had been invited on Today to talk about the shock of 19-year-old George’s court case for lying over a car crash.
She added: ‘I dearly wish I hadn’t mentioned the sentencing at all and I am so sorry to anyone who heard about George’s future from me instead of the judge.’