10 MAY 2015 Television
broadcasts than the arrival of a new baby to the British royal family. Admittedly, this time round things seemed positively muted compared to the last occasion in 2013, when the media set up vans outside the Lindo wing of St Mary’s Hospital in London days in advance. This time, they were permitted to begin their nutty broadcasts only when the princess actually went into labour — presumably to limit the time that hospital staff had to deal with Burley shoving a microphone up their nostrils.
While Burley waited for a baby to come out of Kate Middleton’s vagina, she was forced to fill the broadcast hours by interviewing a succession of mentally abnormal people outside the hospital.
One was a toothless crone with pink hair, who told Burley: “I’ve always wanted to meet you,” which should have been a sign that she wasn’t of sufficiently sound mind to go on air.
Burley interviewed anyone who happened to be passing her camera. A Japanese tourist told her he liked “travel”, which she managed to mis-hear as him introducing himself as “Trevor”. There was a thrilling moment when a group of French rugby fans did some sort of Haka routine outside the hospital. We had to take it on faith that they were chanting something nice about the baby, though the tone sounded a little aggressive.
“I don’t know,” Burley mugged comically to the camera. One got the feeling that Kay doesn’t really approve of French people.
It wasn’t just Burley having to frantically improvise coverage. Over on BBC, royal correspondent Nicholas Witchell freely admitted that the channel had absolutely bugger-all to show either.
“We’re having to fill the airtime,” he said candidly at one stage. Later: “We have no idea what’s going on, nor are we likely to.”
Witchell specialises in making it chillingly clear that he has literally not one shred more information than you or me at home: “There’s no more I can tell you about the process that has now begun,” he said at one point, prompting a call on Twitter for the BBC to provide him with a human biology textbook.
Burley was chatting to some posh oke in front of St Mary’s when she heard her sidekick announce, looking at her phone, that the baby had arrived.
“We’ve got a baby?” squealed Burley, practically shoving the posh oke out of the picture. “Come here!” she commanded, yanking the woman towards her by her sleeve. Then she started power-walking down the street yelling: “It’s a girl!”
After that, Kay still stuck around trying to figure out whether the camera would get a look at Prince George. “Let’s do the calculations,” she said. “He’s 22 months old, he’s going to have to go to bed by about 7 o’clock.”
“Yes,” said her sidekick, earnestly consulting a watch. “And have tea. And maybe a bath.” She looked at her watch again.
On his earlier arrival at the hospital with his father, we learnt that Prince George had already been taught how to wave. There’s a whole life full of waving for him — and his sister — ahead.
Rebecca Davis’s book Best White and Other Anxious Delusions is out now.