Whiteley was bitten by a ferret on an edition of "Calendar" in 1977. The animal bit his finger for half a minute before its owner, Brian Plummer, prised it free. The clip is often repeated on programmes showing television out-takes. Whiteley once joked that when he died, the headlines would read, ""Ferret man dies"", which was the headline of the Yorkshire regional newspaper when he did die, in his honour. He said, "It's made a lot of people laugh and it's been shown all over the world. It's 30-odd years since it happened and I think I've been a great PR man for the ferret industry. Ferrets have a lot to be grateful for, to me, you see they've become acceptable because one of them bit me."