The colloquial British-English phrase skateboarding duck designates a trifling, whimsical news item—especially one that is used as a light-note ending to a television or radio news broadcast.
This phrase occurs, for example, in an interview of the British author Frank Cottrell-Boyce (born 1959), by Alex Clark, published in The Guardian (London and Manchester, England) of Wednesday 3rd July 2024 [G2 section (Life & Arts): page 8, column 2]:
Frank Cottrell-Boyce doesn’t believe in pessimism. Even being announced as the brand-new children’s laureate in the week when all eyes are focused on Westminster and the polling booths makes him hopeful that people will turn to a cheerier story in search of relief, meaning he can leap into the classic “and finally” spot on news bulletins. “I’m happy to be that skateboarding duck,” he grins as he chats over Zoom from his home on Merseyside.
The phrase skateboarding duck refers to a short film by John Pettman (1955-2009), first broadcast on Wednesday 24th May 1978 in Nationwide, BBC’s early-evening current affairs programme from September 1969 to August 1983. The following explanations are from John Pettman’s obituary, published in The Daily Telegraph (London, England) of Friday 3rd July 2009 [page 31, column 6]:
Pettman spotted the potential of a story about an Aylesbury duck called Herbie, which the Randall family of Croydon had bought for their two children. His film showed the creature having breakfast with the family and attacking their dog. A fleeting, four-second shot showed Herbie using the children’s skateboard.
The image seemed to capture the public’s imagination, and the BBC received many requests to show it again, and it frequently did. The film won a Royal Television Society Award.
The following is John Pettman’s film about Herbie the duck, broadcast on Wednesday 24th May 1978—source: BBC Archive:
These are, in chronological order, some of the early occurrences that I have found of the phrase skateboarding duck used in the sense of a trifling, whimsical news item:
1-: From the column Londoner’s Diary, published in The Standard (London, England) of Wednesday 3rd October 1984 [page 6, column 2]:
In the summer I revealed a memo from Bruce Gyngell, Kerry Packer’s man in charge of TV-am, to his staff on his philosophy of news. Gyngell thought that news was a skateboarding duck not the Foreign Secretary in Moscow holding disarmament talks.
2-: From Here’s the good news, by Vanda Rumney, published in the Sandwell Evening Mail (West Bromwich, West Midlands, England) of Monday 31st December 1984 [page 18, column 2]:
I have to admit to being a firm fan of those bits of the news known in the trade as the And Finallies. You know, they are the bits at the end of the programmes when the doom and gloom of the news is lifted by a funny piece.
[…]
Today we get a chance to catch up with the real-life skateboarding ducks of the past 12 months. There’s the showjumping cow, the couple who got married in a burning building and even the people who smoke their newspapers.
3-: From Romance survey leaves me cold!, by Kim Chalet, published in the North Dorset Western Gazette (Yeovil, Somerset, England) of Friday 6th February 1987 [page 23, column 2]:
IF the summer months are nicknamed the “silly season” in the trade then the weeks working up to the celebrated Feast of St Valentine must come dangerously close, despite the absence of sun, sand and skateboarding ducks.
4-: From a radio review by Alan Jowett, published in the Manchester Evening News (Manchester, Greater Manchester, England) of Saturday 10th September 1988 [page 24, column 1]:
AN ITEM on Piccadilly’s Update on Monday in the Just Fancy That spot usually reserved by broadcasters for news of skateboarding ducks and the like, told us that the nutritionalists had reported that rural thuggery and violence among soccer fans was caused by junk food and that shopkeepers should clear the offending gunge off the shelves and stock up with healthier alternatives.
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