Earlier this week, BBC Breakfast invited Danish film director Nicolas Winding Refn to come on and discuss his Los Angeles crime thriller Drive. When asked about the violence in the film, Refn casually describes how “violence is very easy to work with, because it’s a bit like fucking…”

The thought of Middle England collectively choking on its Cornflakes just never gets old, and this got us thinking about some other brief lapses in the BBC’s otherwise immaculate standards.

It turns out BBC Breakfast is something of a goldmine. Here are some of our favourites:

Esther Rantzen’s bollocks

Helen Mirren’s little shit

Christian Bale’s unedited outburst

There have also been plenty of accidental f-bombs, Freudian slips and bird flippings at other times of the day, when you’d expect the caffeine to have kicked in and everything to be a little more polished. Here are a couple of the more memorable incidents from recent broadcasts…

Who could forget BBC weatherman Tomasz Schafernaker being caught giving his colleagues the finger? The pointless chin scratching manoeuvre just adds to the brilliance of this blooper.

And finally, even that bastion of intellectual rigour and all-round good taste, BBC Radio 4, is not immune from the occasional cock-up. Twice in one day though guys, seriously?

If you remember any other great unintentional obscenities from live TV or radio, be sure to let us know!