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Reporter Covering Gasoline Shortage Has Hilariously Fitting Name—And People Can't Stop Giggling

Mike Walsh
Sep. 28, 2021
@redleaderwright/Twitter

A BBC reporter is getting a lot of unanticipated attention for his name after he covered an aggressively apropos news story about a petrol shortage in the UK.

Phil McCann, the reporter, stressed that the fuel shortage was because of the shortage of drivers to distribute petrol to the proper locations, not because of a shortage of petrol itself.

However, the finer details were lost on some folks across the internet due to Phil McCann being a homophone for "Fill My Can."





Phil McCann isn't the only BBC reporting person with an unfortunately appropriate name in the history of the network.

An Avon & Somerset police officer named "Rob Banks" made headlines after several people noted the unfortunate homograph of his name, and questioned his future as a police officer.





McCann was pleasantly surprised to find his name trending on Twitter, saying that "there [were] worse reasons" to do so.

He laughed along with the rest of Twitter, saying he felt like he was back in year nine and that he, too, was a victim of "Nominative determinism."

Nominative determinism is the hypothesis that people tend to work in areas of work that reflect their names. This idea was first put into the collective unconscious in 1994 by New Scientist, and visual evidence continues to show up to suggest nominative determinism isn't completely bonkers.






McCann, however, said his name was not appropriate--at least, not in terms of how he, himself, would act in the fuel shortage.

"I would never fill a can in the back of my car with petrol, as apparently some people have been doing. That's not the kind of thing I would do. Panic buying very much discouraged, but of course it hasn't made a difference to places like this."


BBC correspondents, as well as British lawmakers, remain frustrated with the public as panic-buying has caused a visible petrol shortage, rather than what the government said would have been largely "invisible at the point of sale." The panic buying has not shown any signs of relenting.