Advertisement

Kelly family breaks silence on BBC viral video

The Kelly family introduce themselves to the world after Robert's interrupted BBC interview went viral.

The Kelly family introduce themselves to the world after Robert's interrupted BBC interview went viral.

The professor interrupted by his mischievous children in a live BBC interview last week says the aftermath of the video had been “a little bit stressful, but we are trying to handle it”.

“Since Friday night we’ve been fairly relentlessly solicited on social media by phone and by email,” Professor Robert Kelly told BBC News in a follow-up .

“We turned off our phones or put them on airplane mode for a while.”

Korea expert Kelly was doing a live Skype interview with the BBC about the impeachment of South Korea’s president, Park Geun-hye, when his four-year-old daughter, Marion, burst into the room.

She was closely followed by eight-month old son, James, who rolled nonchalantly in on his walker, unleashing chaos in the room.

The clip went viral on the internet, with more than 40 million views on Facebook and being retweeted tens of thousands of times after it was shared on the BBC World News Twitter account.

How a mum would have handled this interruption

Professor Kelly said he felt a mixture of “embarrassment, amusement and affection” watching the comical footage.

Professor Kelly’s wife, Kim Jung-A, said this was the first time in about six years their children had walked in on one of their dad’s TV appearances.

“Most of the time he locks the door,” Kim said.

“Most of the time they (the children) come back to me after they find the locked door. But they didn’t. And then I saw the door was open.

“It was chaos for me.”

Professor Kelly told the BBC his first reaction had been “mortification” and worry the broadcaster would never call him again.

The many assumptions that Kim was a nanny, and not the children’s mother, made them “pretty uncomfortable”, the pair said.

But they appreciated why most people found the video so funny, they added.

“I mean it was terribly cute,” Professor Kelly told the Wall Street Journal. 

“I made this minor mistake that turned my family into YouTube stars. It’s pretty ridiculous.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1miLP7GsB4

He told the BBC in the follow-up interview: “We watched it multiple times, too, and our families have watched it as well. Everybody we know seems to think it’s pretty hysterical.”

“It was sort of catching a regular family off-guard and stuff. It’s funny.

“We laughed a lot,” Kim added.

Professor Kelly confirmed he had been wearing trousers at the time of the interview following speculation that he had not been wearing any pants.

The Skype interview that went viral

– With AAP

Stay informed, daily
A FREE subscription to The New Daily arrives every morning and evening.
The New Daily is a trusted source of national news and information and is provided free for all Australians. Read our editorial charter
Copyright © 2024 The New Daily.
All rights reserved.