There was a carnival going on ... in Kay Burley’s head
THERE was a mad scramble at breakfast time, nothing to do with eggs. An early morning tweet had alerted the world to the news that the Duchess of Cambridge was in labour. Before you could say push harder, Kay Burley was outside the Lindo Wing for Sky TV, thanking Kate for not giving birth while she was on holiday last week.
As she joined the world’s media crammed into the central London street outside the hospital, Kay was on full throttle from the getgo; predicting a baby by noon, mum and dad on the hospital steps by six, home to Kensington Palace minutes later. As it turned out, she wasn’t far wrong.
Early in the morning, she collared royal photographer Arthur Edwards to ask him how soon Kate might give birth. Like he would know? He gave it his best shot.
‘Well, she is a very fit lady,’ Arthur said, but Kay’s magpie mind had already moved on to photographic technicalities.
‘How hard is it to get them with their eyes open?’ she asked Edwards, meaning babies, not duchesses. I think.
Over on ITV, Lorraine Kelly was thinking a big thought. As it was St George’s Day, she wondered, would a baby girl be called Georgiana? Later on This Morning (also ITV), Holly Willoughby used her psychic banana (don’t ask) to divine the sex of the baby. It predicted it would be a boy. Those who doubt that fruit has telepathic qualities should just hold it with the sniggers. As we now all know, the banana called it right.
Sarah Campbell was there for the BBC, standing ‘outside some of the most famous hospital steps in London’ with all the drear tum-te-tedium of someone expecting the next bus. ‘There is little we can do apart from wait,’ she reported to Carrie Gracie back in the newsroom.
For Channel 5, royal correspondent Simon Vigar pointed out that ‘360,000 other women around the world today will go into labour’, but not one of them would do it under such mass TV scrutiny.
At least Burley is always enthusiastic. ‘There is a carnival atmosphere here,’ she yelled, perhaps talking about the inside of her own head. With no news, news crews resorted to interviewing members of the public and the random experts they had rustled up to state the obvious.
This meant a scrum of cameras surrounding a bunch of slightly creepy people in Union Jack outfits, holding up plastic baby boy dolls as they drank prosecco and shouted hip hip hooray.
AMIDWIFE passed on some baby birthing wisdom to the nation. What time might the royal tot arrive? ‘Normally subsequent babies are faster than the first, but it can go the other way,’ she said.
Does the family dynamic change with a third baby? ‘The obvious thing is that you now have three, not two,’ she said.
Historian Robert Lacey was on hand for ITN, suggesting the new baby ‘is a sign of how the British royal family has the ability to regenerate itself’. Yes! They procreate! Anyone would think they were human, the way they carry on. Meanwhile, Kay was in the crowd, chatting to the people she calls ‘superfans’.
‘Are you a visitor… where are you from?’ she asked a gentleman of oriental appearance. ‘Dulwich,’ came the reply. ‘Oh, you haven’t come far. Why have you popped down here today?’
‘Because I am a Japanese journalist and I cover all royal events,’ he replied, as she moved on.
All good fun, with an air of mayhem, but where oh where was my absolutely favourite royal expert, Alastair Bruce of Crionaich? Sky’s man with his finger on the pulsing heartbeat of royal history arrived outside the Lindo Wing just before 12pm, with the chirpy air of a freshly shampooed robin. He had driven from Winchester with his elderly mother navigating the route.
Bandbox smart in his brass-buttoned blazer, he was soon adding pleasingly Harry Potteresque historical detail to this event, talking of the Page of the Present, the Privy Purse, the Queen enjoying something he called the ‘Easter Court’ at Windsor. He also aired his disapproval of the rococo easel used to display the royal birth notice at Buckingham Palace. ‘It is a very flamboyant thing, it reminds me of vaudeville theatres. In a way, you expect Danny La Rue to appear at any moment,’ he said.
Do you Alastair, do you really? Sometimes I think you should get out more, and not always with your mummy. However, as always, he came out with the best quotes. ‘Here is a child,’ he boomed, summoning up every particle of Old Testament grit in his blazered being, ‘who is only five heartbeats away from being a sovereign.’
And what did he think of the way darling Princess Charlotte waved when she visited her new little brother at the hospital? ‘The way she waved was pretty much in the way of Queen Mary – very determined,’ he said.
We all gasped when Kate finally appeared with her new baby. She was in high heels, glowing, glamorous, ready for a cocktail party. She wasn’t even walking gingerly.
Alistair and Kay looked on in wonder. She squealed in delight, he pondered on the mysteries of the universe. ‘I can only guess, being a man, what she has gone through,’ he said, finally.