Take two! Professor Robert E Kelly, who went viral last week when his kids crashed a live televised BBC News interview he was doing via Skype, spoke with the news outlet again Tuesday, March 14. The time, his wife, Jung-a Kim, and their children, Marion and James, joined in on purpose.
“I made this minor mistake that turned my family into YouTube stars,” Kelly told the Wall Street Journal. “It’s pretty ridiculous.”
When he originally appeared on BBC News Friday, March 10, to discuss the impeachment of South Korea’s Park Geun-hye, his daughter opened the door and bounced in wearing yellow goggles. While Kelly, a professor in the Department of Political Science and Diplomacy at South Korea’s Pusan National University, tried to nudge her off screen, his son bopped in on a rocker to join the fun. His wife then attempted to do damage control and rushed in to shuttle the children out of the home office.
“As soon as she opened the door I saw her image on my screen,” Kelly, who admits he usually locks the office door, continued to the WSJ. “My wife did a great job cleaning up a really unanticipated situation as
best she possibly could. … It was funny. If you watch the tape I was
sort of struggling to keep my own laughs down. They’re little kids and
that’s how things are.”
The anchor played it cool, though, and Kelly only acknowledged the moment with a simple “Pardon me” at the time.
“We’ve watched it multiple times, too, and our families have watched it as well,” Kelly admitted when he and his family returned to BBC via Skype Tuesday. “Everybody we know seems to think it’s pretty hysterical. We understand why people find it enjoyable.”
Kelly even settled one of the Internet’s biggest questions about the viral video during his chat with the BBC News’ James Menendez Tuesday: He was, in fact, wearing pants during the original interview.
