The Loose Women panel discussed social media fails today and Ruth Langsford was able to trump them all with her tale.
The 58-year-old host hung her head in shame as she recalled how last year she accidentally shared an explicit image on Twitter in what should have been a touching Mother’s Day tribute.
It was an almighty error as poor Ruth didn’t realise she had shared an image of a man’s private parts – which had been sent to her as a meme – underneath a family photo.
She also left the snap up for hours as she wasn’t told about her error until the following day.
Ruth, who has a son Jack with husband Eamonn Holmes, had been paying tribute to her mum Joan and sister Julia in the Twitter post last year when she made the mistake.
Sharing a family photo, she wrote: “‘My wonderful Mum & big Sis. Thinking of those who no longer have their Mums….. you’ll always have memories x.”
However, she failed to crop the photo stream from beneath her image, meaning small thumbnails of all the recent pics on her phone were also shared with fans – including the offending meme she’d been sent by a friend.
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Sharing her mortification over the mistake on Loose Women today, Ruth said: “I can’t believe it was Mother’s Day!”
Explaining how it happened, she told Saira Khan, Coleen Nolan and Jane Moore how a friend had sent her the “hilarious” meme that had gone viral.
She thought it was a picture of a shoe, and said she was shocked when she opened it to see it was actually male genitalia.
Ruth said: “I didn’t realise what it was at first and thought ‘that’s a nice pair of shoes’ then I went ‘Oh My God!’
“‘Ha, ha, hilarious,’ I thought and a few moments later I decided to post a picture of me and my mum.
“I don’t know quite how I did it, but at the bottom if you look close enough are all the pictures that were on my feed, including the man’s appendage in the sandals!”
Even more embarrassingly, Ruth said she didn’t realise her mistake until she came to work on the Monday and everyone was laughing about it in their meeting.
Learning from her mistake, Ruth said: “Now if people send me pictures like that, I laugh then delete!”
She added she’s also now super careful about anything she posts, double-checking what she’s written and what can be seen in the background of her pictures.
The topic was raised after Celebrity Big Brother star Marnie Simpson inadvertently shared a picture on Snapchat of her boyfriend changing.
Marnie didn’t realise he could be seen in the background with his trousers down when she posted a picture of her cute dog.
Oops!
Have you ever made a social media fail like Ruth’s? Leave us a comment on our Facebook page @EntertainmentDailyFix and let us know what you think!