Weather for Ducks

On the incident

Yes. Fine. Let's do this.

On the fourteenth of October I said, on national television, at 6:52 in the evening, that the weekend would be "lovely." I used that word. I have seen the clip. Everyone has seen the clip. My own mother has the clip.

What followed was, meteorologically speaking, not lovely.

On what actually happened

The models disagreed. They disagree constantly; that is what models are for. Four of them said high pressure would hold. One said it would not. The one that said it would not was, and I want to be precise here, the model we all privately referred to as The Pessimist, because it had spent the previous three months predicting the end of the world every second Thursday.

I went with the four.

The Pessimist was right. It has never let any of us forget it. I am aware that it is a computer.

On the phrase "weather for ducks"

I said this on the Monday, on air, attempting lightness in the face of what was by then a genuinely significant flooding event, and it was the single worst decision of my professional life.

It is on a mug. There are several mugs. I have been sent eleven of them, including one from my own daughter, at Christmas, which I thought showed a lack of loyalty and which she thought was hilarious, and which — I concede — was hilarious.

On being recognised

It happens roughly weekly. It has happened for eleven years. The exchange is always the same and I could perform it in my sleep:

"Here — aren't you—"

"Yes."

"Weather for ducks!"

"That's the one."

"Ha!"

I have developed, over a decade, a very specific facial expression for this moment. It is warm, it is rueful, and it says yes, we are both enjoying this equally, and it is a complete lie, and it is the finest piece of acting anyone in my family has ever produced.

On the letters

Here is the part I don't say on the radio.

About a year after, I got a letter from a woman in the affected area. I opened it in the car park because I opened all of them in the car park, so that I could do the crying somewhere with no colleagues in it.

She said her husband had watched me every night for twenty years. She said he had died in the March, before the flooding, and that she had not been able to make herself watch the news since, because the news was his. And she said she had put it on that Monday by accident and heard me say weather for ducks and had laughed for the first time in seven months, and then cried for about an hour, and that she wanted me to know that.

She did not mention the forecast.

I have that letter. It is not in a box in the loft; it is in the drawer of my desk, where I can get at it.

On retirement

Thirty-one years. Eleven thousand forecasts. Accuracy, over my career, of somewhere north of ninety per cent, a figure I mention at parties to people who are already leaving.

They will run the clip. Of course they will run the clip. There will be a montage and it will be forty per cent that Tuesday and they will get a duck into the studio, because someone always gets a duck into the studio.

I have made my peace with it.

If you are going to be remembered for one sentence out of eleven thousand forecasts, there are worse ones than a bad joke that made a widow laugh.

Still. It was four models against one.