Slips of the tongue can be annoying for interviewers when they happen once. But when one error leads into another and then another, all in the space of a few words, it can be triply frustrating.

Here Andrew Marr on his BBC One show was asking a question to Labour’s Tom Watson. In line 02, Marr makes the first slip when he says ‘Tor-’ (Tory) but quickly corrects this to ‘Conservative’. However he realises even this is wrong since he intended to say ‘Labour Party’.

Andrew Marr:
01 in the same spirit of that erm
02 Jeremy Corbyn told the Tor-
03 er the Conservative Party
04 tt((winces & slaps knee))
05 start again
06 Jeremy Torbyn told (.)
07 Corbyn told the labour party conference

External link to clip

After the wincing and slapping of the knee in line 04 we then see phoneme preservation in line 05 when he says ‘Tobyn’ instead of ‘Corbyn’. The /t/ phoneme from the original error ‘Tor-‘ is preserved and placed on ‘Corbyn’. A hat trick of slips. Howzat!

Error 1

Actual expression: Tor-

Target expression: Conservative Party

Classification: Word substitution

Error 2

Actual expression: Conservative party

Target expression: Labour Party

Classification: Word substitution

Error 3

Actual expression: Torbyn

Target expression: Corbyn

Classification: Phoneme preservation

BBC, The Andrew Marr Show (about 22 mins)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0bltt3d/the-andrew-marr-show-30092018