Kate Langbroek has opened up about a “mortifying” X-rated joke she made as a panellist on Monday’s episode of Have You Been Paying Attention – after forgetting her own teenage son was in the studio audience.
A slightly sheepish Langbroek hopped on a call with Kyle and Jackie O on Tuesday morning to explain the moment, which was edited before it aired on Channel 10 due to its explicit nature.
After fellow panelist Sam Pang complained about the torrent of innuendo about a food prop – a phallic-shaped tube of liverwurst – Langbroek exclaimed, “What innuendo?” and she mimed performing oral sex on the prop, even pushing her own head down onto it as host Tom Gleisner buried her head in her hands.
Langbroek soon had the same reaction when Pang reminded her that her son Lewis was in the studio audience.
Lewis, 18, a year 12 student, was shown on camera giving a nervous laugh as he watched his mum’s antics.
Speaking to Kyle and Jackie O this morning, Kate groaned as she explained how she’d gotten carried away in the moment.
“First of all, it wasn’t live – they edit (the show) for time. But because there was a (studio) audience in there, and there hasn’t been since pre-Covid, you get a bit giddy. The boys yell out swear words and you know it’ll be cut out. I thought that was going to happen!” she said.
“I was giddy as a girl, I was having fun, I was with my friends… Oh. My. Goodness. When Pang said, ‘You know your son’s in the audience,’ it was like the world closed in on me. I was so mortified. He was in the front row!”
Langbroek said Lewis had been “a good sport” about it, but when Kyle and Jackie O got him on the line he couldn’t resist publicly raking his mum over the coals.
He told the hosts the moment had been “pretty mortifying, to be honest.”
“Externally I was laughing, but internally… the pain that I feel cannot be overstated,” he joked.
Kyle tried to throw Langbroek even further under the bus by asking if Lewis had seen his mum’s early acting work on the racy ’90s soap Chances (Langbroek famously appeared topless in one episode).
As his mother begged him to hang up, Lewis told the hosts: “I don’t think I want to explore down that path.”
“But some of your mates might, darling,” Kate quipped.
Langbroek had previously told Kyle and Jackie O she and her eldest son shared a special relationship – one forged in part by Lewis’ childhood cancer battle.
Speaking on the KIIS Network’s 3pm Pick Up back in June, she gave listeners an emotional update about her son’s health.
Lewis was diagnosed with leukemia when he was six and endured four years of “terrible” treatment, she said.
His latest annual check-up marked an important milestone, as it was the last time the now-18-year-old would need to visit Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital to monitor his health.
“They told us: ‘This is the last time we’ll be seeing you at this hospital because Lewis is transitioning to an adult hospital.’ I thought ‘oh my goodness, there were so many times where we thought this day may not come’,” Langbroek said.
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