Jeremy Vine's awkward gaffe involving Beyonce and the school concrete crisis

06 September 2023 , 14:10

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Jeremy Vine's awkward gaffe involving Beyonce and the school concrete crisis

Jeremy Vine has been left red-faced after an unintentional but awkward gaffe involving Beyonce and the school concrete crisis during the presenter's Radio 2 show earlier this week.

The former Strictly Come Dancing Contestant, 58, had been discussing the closure of around 100 of the country’s 20,000 schools due to being made with a type of lightweight concrete prone to collapse on his radio show, before moving on to play a song for his listeners.

Ahead of playing Beyonce's 2008 hit song Halo, Jeremy discussed how Prince Harry and Meghan Markle had been spotted dancing at Queen Bee's concert in America recently and continued with his show. So what was the issue? Well, Halo begins with the lyrics: "Remember those walls I built? Well, baby, they’re tumblin’ down.'"

Spotting the awkward segue between discussing the concrete crisis and then playing Halo, one of Jeremy's listeners quickly took to Twitter, now known as X, and shared a clip of the broadcast, adding: "Almost crashed the car when I heard this (wait for the song). Still deciding whether the music scheduler should be sacked or given a pay rise…"

After the reaction, Vine quickly responded to the tweet, saying: "This is on me. Apologies everyone." Many of his Radio 2 listeners saw the funny side, with one saying: "Gave us a good laugh! Don’t worry." While another compared the 5 News star to Norwich's finest radio DJ, Alan Partridge, teasing: "Alan Partridge would be proud."

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A veteran broadcaster on TV and radio, Jeremy recently opened up about the end of his radio career, admitting that he will be 'cool' when the time finally comes for him to hang up his presenting boots. As the latest listening figures show BBC Radio 2 has lost over one million listeners as the station continues to shift towards a younger audience listenership, the brother of comedian Tim Vine reckons when the time comes for him to be replaced by a younger presenter amid the shakeup, he won't feel any bitterness towards BBC bosses.

Speaking to hosts of the How to be 60 podcast, he said: “We have to accept that because what you cannot do is say ‘how unfair’ - the unfairness is we’ve done it for so long. So, I think I’ll be cool with it actually, I think I will. I’m the oldest one now, I was the youngest one for ages, but I don’t really go for public panic. I’m so uncomfortable talking about my own professional demise. I can’t quite factor it in, and I do think that we all have to be aware that it’s coming for all of us.”

Victoria Johns