Did You Hear About The Time Max Headroom Crashed DOCTOR WHO?

This is old news, really, but I tripped over it last night, and I had never heard about it before.  I got a huge laugh out of it, so I wanted to share.

On November 22, 1987, about 11:15 pm, a PBS affiliate was broadcasting the Doctor Who episode "Horror of Fang Rock", and the episode was interrupted by a bizarre signal intrusion.  A video of a guy in a Max Headroom mask cut in.  The Headroom impostor ranted, cursed, and made gestures at the camera before dropping his pants and having a spanking administered to him by an accomplice with a flyswatter.  

From Wikipedia:  

The unidentified man continued to utter random phrases, including New Coke's advertising slogan "Catch the Wave" while holding a Pepsi can (Max Headroom was a Coca-Cola spokesperson at the time), then tossing the can down, and making an obscene gesture with a rubber extension over his middle finger (the gesture was cut off at the bottom of the screen due to the close-up of the camera) then retrieving the Pepsi can, and saying "Your love is fading", before removing the rubber extension, then began humming the theme song to Clutch Cargo, and stating that he had "made a giant masterpiece for all the greatest world newspaper nerds" (the call letters WGN are an abbreviation for "World's Greatest Newspaper", in reference to the Tribune Company's Chicago Tribune). He then held up a glove, said "my brother is wearing the other one", and put the glove on. He then took the glove off, adding that it was "dirty."

The picture suddenly cut over to a shot of the man's lower torso. His buttocks were exposed, and he was holding the now-removed mask up to the camera while being spanked with a flyswatter by an unidentified accomplice wearing a dress, as the man exclaimed "They're coming to get me!". The transmission then blacked out and cut off, and the hijack was over after about 90 seconds.

WTTW, which maintains its transmitter atop the then-Sears Tower, found that its engineers were unable to stop the hijacker. According to station spokesman Anders Yocom, technicians monitoring the transmission "attempted to take corrective measures, but couldn't". "By the time our people began looking into what was going on, it was over", he told the Chicago Tribune. WTTW was able to find copies of the hijacker's telecast with the help of Doctor Who fans who had been taping the show.

Thanks to the internet, the video is preserved and readily available.  It's embedded below, and I should point out it's probably not safe for work.  I'm sure you don't want your boss walking in on you watching a guy with his pants down being spanked with a flyswatter.  It's not all that graphic or anything.  Just trying to be a little responsible here.