The Day the Kids Barged in

When Marion and baby James walked in on dad the whole world went bananas.

- Sandy Cook

IT WAS the video that broke the internet, the photobomb of the century, a few moments of TV gold that will go down in broadcasting history. Within days the clip had been viewed more than 84 million times, spawned mountains of memes and sent Twitter into a tizz.

Even in a world where cat videos rule and cute kiddie antics clog YouTube, this was something else.

In case you’ve been living under a Wi-Fi-less rock, here’s a quick recap: Robert Kelly, a professor of political science at South Korea’s Pusan National University, is being interviewed by the BBC’s James Menendez about the impeachment of South Korean leader Park Geun-hye. Suddenly the door opens and a little girl comes marching merrily in.

“I think one of your children just walked in,” Menendez says. The next moment a baby enters in a walker – followed a few seconds later by a frantic woman who grabs both children and hauls them out of the room.

Robert apologises and fluffs his words for a second, then it’s business as usual.

Cue cyberspace explosion. Of course, the internet being the beast it is, not all the reaction was warm and fuzzy – and soon the professor was being attacked for heartlessly shoving his daughter away, viewers who’d assumed his wife was his nanny were ripped apart for being racist, and the seeming subservience of Asian women was being called into question.

“This doesn’t make me laugh,” one Twitter user said. “He reacts coldly, doesn’t turn around for the kids, typical alpha male.”

“My husband who has autism stared at him and said, ‘That man hates his kids’,” another wrote.

“I was chilled to the bone,” a woman declared.

“A woman would have picked up the kid, not pushed it away. Hope he doesn’t fire the nanny!” yet another said.