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When Mairi Duncan was briefly distracted from pulling a pint by Princess Diana's funeral, the opening of a trap door behind her was not the only thing she failed to foresee.
In today's world of fleeting fame and instant celebrity, it took only a few moments - and
a ten-year hiatus - for Ms Duncan to achieve stardom by tumbling 4m into the cellar of the Edinburgh pub where she worked.
This week 30-year-old mother found herself sitting beside the British actor Rupert Everett on one of America's leading chat shows after CCTV footage of her dramatic tumble became a hit on the YouTube video sharing website.
Entitled "Cashier", the 13-second clip of Ms Duncan plunging down the trap door, opened while she was serving a customer, has become a cyberspace legend and is downloaded by thousands of users every day seeking a fix of schadenfreude.
Watch the clip on YouTube
Miraculously, the former bar worker's injuries were limited to heavy bruising and she had long forgotten her unexpected encounter with the concrete cellar floor.
But in the latest example of the ability of the internet and sites such as YouTube and MySpace to thrust unsuspecting mortals into the limelight, Ms Duncan, who is now unemployed, was plucked from the Edinburgh suburb of Dalkeith five days ago and flown to Hollywood.
Her appearance on Thursday night on Jimmy Kimmel Live, the flagship late night chat show of the ABC network, filmed in a theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, was watched by about five million Americans.
Speaking before taking her seat next to Mr Everett, she said: "I'm living in a bubble at the moment - I can't believe what's happening.
"I'm a bit scared and nervous. They've given me my own dressing room and I get my hair and make-up done and so on. The whole trip is a bit of a dream."
In a troubled week for the reality television genre, some would suggest that attaining celebrity for a potentially fatal fall captured by a security camera nearly ten years earlier highlights the random nature of modern fame.
But for Ms Duncan's legions of internet fans, it seems guilty pleasure is to be gained from the grainy black and white footage of her accident.
One comment on the YouTube website yesterday read: "This woman is a legend in our workplace - we called her Jackie for some random reason.
The more you watch it, the funnier it gets, the hands desperately trying to grab onto something. Awww, poor Jackie."
The moment of fame took place when Ms Duncan was working in the Unicorn Pub, owned by her cousin, on 6 September 1997, the day of the funeral of Princess Diana.
Momentarily distracted by the coverage of the state occasion on television, the bar worker failed to notice as a colleague opened the large trap door leading to the pub's cellar directly behind her while she was pulling a pint of lager for a customer.
The film shows Ms Duncan looking up towards the television while clutching a £20 note and then disappearing into the void as she turns towards the cash till.
The mother-of-one said: "I remember it quite clearly. I was serving someone while watching a TV above the bar. Princess Diana's funeral procession was on the TV so I was distracted by that.
"I finished serving the customer and took his £20 and took a step back. The next thing I was at the bottom of the stairs on the concrete floor.
It's a 14ft drop but I was in such shock that I didn't really feel much.
"When I got back up, I was still clutching the £20 note.
But when I looked in the mirror later, I had a bruise from my shoulder to my ankle."
The security camera footage surfaced soon after the accident after a member of staff at the Unicorn, which has since closed, sold it to ITV's You've Been Framed home video programme.
Researchers from ABC contacted Granada TV, which makes You've Been Framed, after a fruitless eight months trying to track down the woman in the YouTube clip.
Ms Duncan's brother, Stuart, said: "The guy who submitted it to You've Been Framed got a £250 cheque but he put the cash behind the bar.
Poor Mairi never saw a penny.
Then YouTube came along and it's all kicked off big time."
- INDEPENDENT
