AHC - Real life Abbott and Costello-type misunderstanding live

Abbott and Costello were famous for the Who's on First routine with names of baseball players like who, what, and so on.

These names were fictional, but there have been routines written about how something could happen like that in real life, like this baseball one from 1988 or Johnny Carson's famous one involving Johnny as Ronald Reagan with several real people and one fake, the Chinese leader Hoo. I even had a Pakistani friend we called Hume and I wound up doing something for a minute in real life with another friend who had come in my room just after I got done talking to him on the phone.

Your challenge is to top me by a lot. Your challenge is to have a real Abbott and Costello style routine happen live on national TV. Well, it can be local but it has to become famous. The greater the better.

It doesn't have to involve names. They had other routines with things such as a half a (heffer) cow, or the problem of an apartment without a flaw and it because her flaw (floor) is his ceiling.

It doesn't have to have any major impact, like during a presidential debate, though bonus points for the more of a lasting impact you can create. Challenge points also awarded the longer you make it. Our confusion over who I was talking to on the phone was pretty short and insignificant. It had little impact on anything and wasn't even live locally. It wasn't even on a phone.

But, with a Point of Departure sometime before, you can write a conical routine where everything gets so confused because of the misunderstanding, one either created accidentally or perhaps even on purpose by someone trying to confuse things, like someone who keeps interrupting because someone else keeps using the word surely. It could be a couple broadcasters at a sporting event, newscasters with a weatherman getting all mixed up, politicians during a speech or debate or Congressional hearing, however you can craft it so the misunderstanding is funny.

Also, well it has to be recorded somehow you could go pre 1900 if you can manage it and have such a misunderstanding merely recorded as a writing by some chronicler but the humor level needs to be higher to compensate. Like for instance if it was a series of telegrams back and forth that got crazier.
 
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Hmm...let's try this, based on a famous A&C routine:

Someone in a big city (take your pick) who is annoyed by the perpetually clumsy garbage collectors servicing their neighborhood decides to surreptitiously record video of them one fine morning using his cell phone.

The guy driving the truck is trying to get into a parking lot to get to a dumpster. He has to maneuver around some parked cars. His partner on the ground yells to him that he has to "back up." "Got it, back up," the driver yells back. "OK, go ahead," the guy on the ground says - and the truck lurches forward and smashes into a Toyota Corolla.

An argument immediately ensues - "What the hell did you do that for?" "You said 'go ahead'!" "I meant for you to back up!" "Then why the hell did you say 'go ahead'?" - that goes on for several minutes, before the garbagers decide to leave a note on the truck and scurry from the scene.

The person recording all this posts the video to YouTube and it goes viral, and is then picked up first by the local news station and then by network and cable news stations as a "lighter side" type of moment.

(This idea is in honor of the guy driving the garbage truck that rear-ended my wife's car; he tried to use the excuse that he was a little bit loopy because he hadn't eaten all day, to which she angrily retorted, "You just drove past a Burger King!")
 
Watch the Fawlty Towers episode "Waldorf Salad" and wait for the bit where somebody orders a screwdriver.

(Speaking of which, watch Fawlty Towers in general, though be aware it uses some pretty salty language in satirizing racism, in a manner that probably wouldn't be allowed today.)
 
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