Los Angeles TV Reporter Is Covered In Projectile Vomit During Live, Beer-Themed Competition [Video]
A KTLA-TV reporter’s assignment at an area beach turned rancid in real time after someone’s vomit flew into frame and all over the reporter and her subject during a live interview.
News reporter Wendy Birch recalled the gross-out moment with the Huffington Post on Wednesday, just one day after the Los Angeles media personality was viewed by thousands of viewers in California being splattered by spit-up during a TV interview at Hermosa Beach for the annual “Run-Paddle-Chug” competition.
“These ‘athletes’ run a mile, paddle a mile and then chug a six-pack of beer,” Birch explained of the Ironman-like event, which celebrated its 43rd anniversary on July 4.
“Ask a local, and they will tell you it started out with just a bunch of guys who wanted to get drunk with friends and check out some pretty girls on the Fourth of July,” the reporter continued with the competition’s backstory.
“Four decades later, the premise is still pretty much the same, except thousands now join in the raucous event. There are some judges, and a timer. But it’s mostly just about the beer.”
Which is exactly, as Birch discovered, was the catalyst for the eruption of vomit that disrupted her chat with a particularly large male competitor of the beer-themed bash (“[He’d] clearly been training for this event for years,” the reporter offered) who was ironically chosen by Birch, in part, to block out anything that might be inappropriate for a live television audience, as the New York Post notes.
NASTY: Reporter Gets Hit With Projectile Vomit While Covering A 4th of July Iron Event https://t.co/Evw8Zzh9n7
— 1013TheBrew (@1013TheBrew) July 5, 2017
“From my vantage point, the first [round of] beer went down easy [among the competitors],” she claimed.
The next, apparently, did not — at least, not for one of the other competitors, according to the soon-to-be besmirched Birch.
“What I didn’t notice until later,” she remarked, “is that [the guy I was interviewing] had a bulls-eye drawn on his back with the words ‘puke here’ written in magic marker,” the interviewer joked.
“And wouldn’t you know it? Someone took him up on the offer right during the middle of my live report, much to the chagrin of me, our anchors and anyone in Southern California who may have been eating breakfast at that very moment.”
For those who can stomach such visuals, a clip of the reporter’s live vomit lead-in can be viewed below. Please be advised that the following clip contains disturbing content.
And for the record, although the recording of the live piece appears to stop short of the projectile vomit actually landing on the reporter’s body, Birch bravely confirmed that it did, indeed, make contact with her skin.
“It was just a technical glitch,” she says of the wonky video.
Her KTLA co-anchors back at the studio, meanwhile, witnessed the entire messy moment as it occurred.
https://twitter.com/mikeblaustein/status/882635220566016000
“While the [other] anchors tried to regain their composure and go on to the next story, I assumed I was still live,” Birch admitted, “so, for the better part of the next two minutes, I just kept interviewing drunken people while sudsy substances flew in the air and landed in my hair.”
After a shower back at home to rinse off the live bits of vomit and a “long nap,” the TV reporter said she was as good as new and ready to return to work the very next day.
[Featured Image by RalchevDesign/iStock]
