The Show Must Go On!

One night when I was anchoring a live TV newscast a Fresnel light exploded over my head, sending down a shower of hot chunks of glass.*

The crew in the control room (some distance away) heard the explosion and the subsequent crash of the glass hitting the floor (and me), but not knowing what actually happened at that point, they just kept the camera on me.

Seeing that they weren't going to roll a commercial to get me off camera, and after I decided that I hadn't been mortally wounded by a gunshot, or whatever, I just continued -- as it turns out, hardly without a pause. (It's funny the things that can go through your mind when you are supposed to be concentrating on a script.)

Once it became obvious to everyone what had happened, I picked up some professional respect points for maintaining my composure. But, then again, I've seen others do the same when something of this sort happened. (And I've also seen some other people fall apart!)

At least I didn't do or say something stupid that would have played forever on You-Tube or some blooper reel.

*There's a definite lesson here about putting safety screens over the front of these lights, something that wasn't done at this TV station.

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