When journos go bananas: What happens when a reporter, a prankster and an inflatable fruit are on live TV?

It is difficult job, being a live news reporter. The pressure to deliver breaking news, keeping an eye out for updates, dramatising even the most mundane events, confronting unpredictable forces of nature; all the while maintaining a poker face. [caption id=“attachment_2607838” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Screengrab from the video. YouTube[/caption] An Italian sports journalist managed to showcase all these traits in a single broadcast. Well, all but the last one. An unidentified Sportitalia reporter was delivering a live report during the deadline day for player transfers in European club football, when a passerby decided to distract him in a rather curious way: Pushing an inflated banana in the reporter’s face (and rubbing it on his head), all the while maintaining eye contact with the camera. The reporter, acting rather professionally in face of the escalating crisis, tries to push the banana away. But like that quote from Zero Dark Thirty, “In the end, everybody breaks, bro.” The reporter, grabbing the banana from the stone-eyed harasser, decides to have take some sweet vengeance right there on live television. Watch the video below:

Never mess with a live news reporter, especially if he’s Italian.