The clip of Sommerville getting unintentionally high is legitimately funny and giggle-inducing itself. The Telegraph broke the story late 2014. There was also an original tweet and YouTube video, but those are gone, too. The Young Turks, however, have the video on their own YouTube channel dating to January 2015.
The video shows Sommerville doing exactly what we described earlier: Standing in a rocky, desert-looking place somewhere vaguely in the Middle East (no further information anywhere) with a pile of burning drugs behind him. It’s not just marijuana, however. As Sommerville himself segues, “Burning behind me is 8.5 tons of heroin, opium, hashish and other narcotics.” That’s as far as he gets, though, before breaking down into a “hee hee hee hee hee” giggle fit. He tries to get things back together, says to the cameraman, “Quick quick quick quick, we just need one more,” tries to deliver another line, and loses it again, and then again. Judging by the sound of things the cameraman was getting a bit blazed, too. After all, that’s what happens if you stand too close to a pile of burning drugs — even outdoors.
As The Telegraph says, Sommerville originally posted the video himself online as an “Xmas laugh, at my expense” after a “year of bullets & bloodshed.” And even though the video got taken down, Sommerville still has his job at the BBC to this day.
