Oh, That Mike's Open ...

George W. Bush and Tony Blair may look back on last week's G-8 summit with a tinge of embarrassment. Not because the meeting of world leaders failed to solve global poverty or secure peace in the Middle East, but because a private chat between the pair was picked up by an open mike and broadcast around the world.

But the conversation — which saw Bush greet the British PM with a cozy, "Yo, Blair. How are you doin'?" — is just the latest case of politicians being caught on-air and unaware.

Here are other high-profile victims of the dreaded live mike, ranked on Time's blush-ometer.

At the height of the cold war in 1984, U.S. President Ronald Reagan joked around while testing a microphone before his weekly radio address. "My fellow Americans. I'm pleased to tell you we have signed legislation today that would outlaw Russia forever," he declared. "We begin bombing in five minutes." Unfortunately, Reagan made the apocalyptic announcement into an open mike, and it was picked up by radio technicians in studios around the country as they waited for the President's broadcast.

In 2004, senior Spanish Socialist Jose Bono was taped at a party meeting quietly telling a colleague that Tony Blair was an "imbecile" and "a complete d___head."

Canadian PM Jean Chretien annoyed his American neighbors with some careless tittle-tattle at a 1997 NATO summit in Madrid. "In your country and my country, all the American politicians would be in prison because they sell their votes," he told Belgian leader Jean-Luc Dehaene and, unwittingly, Canadian broadcaster CBC.

In 1993, British PM John Major had finished a TV interview but tapes were still running when he vented his anger against three Euro-skeptic rebels in his Cabinet. He called them "bastards" and promised to "crucify them."

French President Jacques Chirac heated up the old Anglo-Franco rivalry at a 2005 summit in Russia. Unaware that a French journalist still had a microphone switched on, Chirac joked with German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Russian President Vladimir Putin that "the only thing [Britain has] ever done for European agriculture is mad cow disease ... you can't trust people who cook as badly as that. After Finland [Britain is] the country with the worst food."