Murray, a tiny note of anxiety in her voice, tried again. "Why did you pursue this subject?"
"Which subject are you pointing to?" asked a perplexed Trinh.
"The subject of the HPV vaccine. The 20 articles that you wrote on it," Murray said, clearly wondering why the doctor, journalist and lecturer at Kyoto University School of Medicine was being so obtuse.
"It's not me," came the reply.
"I'm sorry?"
"It's not me," Trinh repeated, with a nervous laugh. "I guess you got the wrong speaker."
"You are Dr Riko Muranaka?" said Murray. And then, as the terrible realisation dawned: "You're not Dr Riko Muranaka..."
"I'm Trinh T Minh-ha, the film-maker," said Trinh.
Murray then had to explain to listeners that "somebody has brought in the wrong person for this interview."
With smooth professionalism, she promised to return to her later, and instead played for time before the correct guest was ushered into the room. "Now we have been joined by Dr Muranaka. Sorry, there was a mix-up there," Murray said.
Trinh eventually returned for a slot later in the programme, as originally intended, and talked about her work and ICA retrospective. She is a film-maker, composer and Professor of Gender and Women's Studies at UC Berkeley.
On social media, listeners described the mix-up as a "car crash", both "funny and quite embarrassing". One suggested: "Perhaps all Asians look the same to the Woman's Hour team," while another asked: "Are these women interchangeable due to their respective races?"
Murray offered "apologies for the confusion". The BBC did not apologise, instead saying that the mix-up was Trinh's fault as she stood up when a junior member of the production team came into the waiting area and called for Dr Muranaka and another guest, the BBC health and science reporter Katie Silver.
"Guests are brought on air quickly in live radio and mistakes can happen. On this occasion the wrong guest came forward when the names were called for the studio and to suggest this was a mix-up for any other reason is incorrect," a BBC spokesman said.
The BBC could not explain why they had failed to tell the two women apart, when they had tweeted out a picture of the real Dr Muranaka a minute before the show started.
A spokesman for Trinh confirmed that she had mistakenly stood up. "She didn't hear properly. The production person rushed in and Minh-ha got up," he said, adding that she was not upset by what happened.
In 2006, Guy Goma found himself being interviewed live on the BBC news channel about the legal dispute between Apple and the Beatles' record label, Apple Corp, over trademark rights.
Goma was there by mistake - he had been sitting in the BBC lobby waiting to attend an interview for an IT job, but a staff member mixed him up with Guy Kewney, a technology journalist.
Unlike Trinh, Goma attempted to plough on with the interview, becoming an internet hero.
