Radio: A fond farewell to the queen of corpsing

Charlotte Green is prone to being 'poleaxed by merriment' (BBC)

Few emotions are as human as giggling, and few gigglers as human as Charlotte Green, whose failure to contain laughter at the most inappropriate moments helped her reach out from a world of disembodied voices. Who but a robot could keep a straight face after a news item about a man called "Twat"?

But no more. The continuity announcer on Radio 4's Today programme is setting down her microphone, along with her colleague Harriet Cass, after a combined 74 years of bulletins.

It almost seems unfair that Green will be best remembered for her bloopers but as someone who has admitted to being "poleaxed by merriment", it's seems unlikely that she will mind.

Green almost lost it in 2000 during a story about a woman called Chastity Bumgardner. She had proved less resilient in 1997, however, when an item about the chief of Papua New Guinea's armed forces, Major General Jack Tuat, led into a story about a sperm whale.

The corpsing queen excelled in 2008 when an item featuring the oldest known recording of the human voice set her off during the next story, about the death of a screenwriter. She apologised to the family, but perhaps even they could have forgiven her. Charlotte, you will be missed.