EVER WONDER WHAT HAPPENS to all those people vying to get on air in the background of a news report once the camera switches off?

BBC political editor Nick Robinson finally lost his patience with one demonstrator on Wednesday evening.

During his piece on the 6 O’Clock News, a protester waved a double-sided “troops home” sign behind the reporter.

Having calmly completed his report, Robinson grabbed the sign and broke it, while someone shouted: “You should be ashamed of yourself, mate”.

As he says at the end of the video below, Robinson was in fact “not even remotely ashamed”.

Writing about the incident on his BBC blog, Robinson wrote:

[A]s I explained afterwards to the protesters who disrupted my broadcast, there are many opportunities to debate whether the troops should be out of Afghanistan without the need to stick a sign on a long pole and wave it in front of a camera.

I am a great believer in free speech but I also care passionately about being able to do my job reporting and analysing one of the most important political stories for years.