Tele­prompter President

Source: Guardian

When the Irish taoiseach received his invitation to the White House to speak alongside Barack Obama on St Patrick's Day, it was his big moment to shine on the world stage.

But when Brian Cowen began his address last night, his speech had a horribly familiar ring to it. And no wonder: he had been repeating exactly what Obama had said minutes earlier.

The autocue was apparently the cause of this embarrassing case of deja vu. Rather than being ready with Cowen's speech, the teleprompting machine simply reloaded the one Obama had just given.

Cowen was around 20 seconds into the wrong speech before he realised his gaffe. He stopped suddenly and looked back at the president to say: "That's your speech."

Obama laughed and returned to the podium to offer what might have been Cowen's remarks. In doing so, Obama thanked Obama for inviting everyone over.

Obama is becoming known as the "tele­prompter president" for his reliance on the prompting screens, which retract when speeches are finished.

Although used for more than half a century, the device was previously employed mainly for set-piece speeches. The current president, however, often uses them for making small introductory statements at the beginning of press conferences.