I’m pretty sure every job comes with some degree of unpleasantness that you just have to put up with. If you’ve managed to work in retail for any amount of time, you have a whole host of stories filed away filed under “times I suppressed my rage at customers/co-workers/managers to keep my job.”
Sadly, reporters broadcasting live from the street have increasingly encountered disrespectful people trying to get camera time or disrupting their work — especially female reporters.
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But this latest incident is definitely a first, and hopefully a last, too.
CBC’s Chris Glover is lucky in some ways — as a reporter, his job allows him to see the beautiful city of Toronto from just about every angle.
However, it also occasionally brings him into situations where he’s a bit too close to folks for comfort.
During a recent broadcast, one of the people behind Chris definitely got inside his bubble in a bizarre incident that, if nothing else, shows that Canadians indeed aren’t always polite.
Glover was just trying to report outside a comedy club in downtown Toronto.
But as he was reporting live on-air, one of the so-called comedians came up behind him, noticed the camera was on, and started behaving bizarrely.
It started with a creepy stare, but soon escalated to some seriously uncomfortable things.
Over about 30 seconds, the guy progressed from smiling to making kissy faces to sticking his tongue out to actually licking and kissing Chris’s neck, shoulders, and ear.
It’s about as disturbing a live broadcast as we’ve ever seen. The studio host did encourage Chris to move away, and he quickly signed off and then left the bar, feeling unsafe.
As hard as it is to watch, it must have been even more difficult for Chris to work through.
Somehow, throughout the whole ordeal, Chris kept a smile on his face and didn’t react negatively while on the air.
He later said that he could smell alcohol on the breath of the guy behind him and sensed him there.
“I could feel something on the back of my neck and on the back of my head,” he told the CBC . “I really didn’t know what it was. Looking back, I knew that it was his tongue and he was licking me.”
By the time Chris had gotten off the air, the guy had disappeared into the crowd.
But his face turned out to be pretty recognizable. He’s an actor and stand-up comedian by the name of Boyd Banks , who has appeared in shows such as Designated Survivor and 12 Monkeys .
“I think in his mind, he was trying to be funny,” Chris said. “That’s the only thing I can assume.”
“But I felt humiliated. I felt embarrassed and I felt I just wanted it to stop. In my 10 years of doing live hits on television, I’ve never had anything like that happen before.”
CBC later reached the actor by phone to confront him about the incident.
And he fessed up about it all.
“There is no excuse for my behavior last night,” he said . “I’m guilty of everything. I am an idiot, and there’s something wrong with me. I’m not making excuses. I want to apologize to the stand-up community in Canada and, of course, the reporter who was doing his job.”
Although Chris did manage to keep his cool on the air, once it was all over and Banks had been identified, he filed a complaint with the police.
And the CBC said that it was taking the situation seriously. “Unfortunately, the trend of harassing reporters continues and is something we take very seriously…simply stated, these incidents are as troubling as they are unacceptable. Chris Glover showed remarkable composure and professionalism in the face of a very awkward situation.”
Watch the whole, disturbing incident below.
h/t CBC
