Anna Ford's voice fails in the middle of the news

"I don't want to say anymore today", said Michael Portillo, when he was doorstepped for the BBC's One O'Clock News on Tory infighting. A few minutes later, the bulletin's regular presenter, Anna Ford, was obliged to join him in tactical silence – those dependably alluring tones having tipped over from huskiness into an unmanageable squawk.

After a filmed package viewers returned to the studio to find Ford handing the baton to a colleague: "I'm afraid my voice is really giving up, so here is Sophie Raworth to take you through the rest of the programme."

The problem began at the top of the bulletin, when Ford suddenly converted the Defence Secretary's name into a strangulated onomatopoeia. "HooOON!", it seems, is the noise you make when your vocal cords fail live on air and you still have 18 words to go before you can hand over to a reporter. "British and American forces are ready for war with Iracchhh," she struggled on, "if Saddam Hussein fails to ddhhissark."

As newsreading fiascos go, it was a modest one – no Bosanquet slump or invasion of raucous lesbians, just a discreet and graceful withdrawal.