Bundesliga author and writer Rafa Honigstein, best known for his appearances on The Guardian’s Football Weekly podcast, got into a spot of bother today when he gave the wanking gesture live on air on BT Sport.

Honigstein explained in a tweet afterwards that he thought the show was still in rehearsal, and didn’t realize he was on live television.

There were reports on social media afterwards that Honigstein had been immediately kicked off the show, but he was seen on the same network a little later, so the reports that he had been sacked don’t appear to be true.

Nevertheless, Twitter has started up a irreverent campaign with the #FreeHonigstein hash-tag.

Bizarrely, this is the second time this weekend that a member (excuse the pun) of BT Sport has used the wanking gesture live on the network. It was only yesterday that David Ginola gestured that host Jake Humphrey was a wanker on-air. The video from that incident can be seen in the background here: