Francis Wilson, weather presenter for Sky News is officially... the worst weather presenter in the history of broadcasting.  We've all discussed it at length and come to the conclusion that he is either completely clueless, plays some sort of perverse game which involves inventing new ways to use words and phrases that make absolutely no sense whatsoever, or both.  There are four facets to his forecasts (can you tell we've spent far too much time on this?):

His first trick is to spend as little time as possible predicting what the weather will be like in the future (hard) and spend as much of the forecast as possible telling us what the weather has been like over the past twenty-four hours (easy).

His second trick - and we can't be sure if he's doing this just to win a bet - is to open a thesaurus at a random page, pick a word and try to use it in his forecast.  One day that word was “bash”, so we were expecting “a bash of rain.”  Chunk?  Oh, that's a good one.  “Today, in the north of Scotland, there'll be scattered clouds and chunks of sunshine.”

Third, Francis likes to demonstrate to the viewers that he can count.  “Temperatures overnight will be seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve.”

Not one to become stuck in a rut - he's only been a weatherman since 1978 - Francis has recently added a fourth string to his bow, namely finding new ways to mangle the English language.

“Much less cold winds beginning to wake up.”  “The winds starting to get up to bring less cold weather our way.”  “As the weekend goes on, well so the less cold weather gets right in everywhere.”

What?!  The word is “warmer,” for goodness sake.  There's no such thing as “less cold.”  If temperatures increase the weather will be “warmer.”

Our video is a particularly eclectic example of the Wilson art as he starts this forecast with a Disney Club “Hi!”, then follows it with an impression of Ron Manager from the Fast Show.  “It's a far cry from small boys in the park.  Jumpers for goalposts.  Isn't it?  Mmm?  Marvellous.”

It's high time Sky handed Francis Wilson his pension and put us all out of our misery.  Their team is full of outstanding weather presenters, headed by the peerless Isobel Lang, so why we need to suffer Francis for one moment longer is anybody's guess.

Please install the Free Flash Player

 
Francis Wilson, the world's worst weather presenter.  Ever.  He's probably wearing that dreadful test-card tie for a bet too...