I was very much hoping you would feature a Terry Devlin clip in the current climate. Well done. Priceless!
I hope the likes of Penny Junor, Gyles Brandreth, Paul Burrell, Nicholas Witchell and the rest of these Palace Creepers read your blog. I never speak ill of the dead, but Norman St. Stevas - that little Maltese [That's enough. Thank you. Ed.]
Unfortunately, when they try out new royal "experts" on TV, they're invariably worse than the Old Guard. What the Terry Devlin sketches capture so perfectly is that tired old trick of trotting out lists of titles, dates and bits of "knowledge" which anyone could find online in 10 seconds - it reminds me of what Andrew Castle does whenever he's commentating on a tennis match for the BBC. because he has to fill the space occupied by adverts on other channels - "Hey, remember that absolutely classic Wimbledon final between Rafa and Roger in 2008. That was a great match. Went to a fifth set, and..." yes, we sodding well know, because we WATCHED it. Tell us something we don't know!
An old boss of mine, Richard Sambrook surprised me by writing a newspaper piece a couple of years ago in which he said it was time to re-think 24 hour news, because you had to fill the time with endless live interviews full of pointless speculation, or correspondents in the field repeating what they'd just read on the web because they're too busy doing live interviews to actually find out what's going on where they are.
Don't get me wrong - I'm a monarchist, and I have no objection in principle to royal fluff on live TV - viewers want it: there just has to be a better way of doing it than having poor old Kay Burley standing in front of a posh hospital desperately trying to get any of her three supposedly expert, guest nonentities to say anything that even hints at some sort of inside knowledge.
I was very much hoping you would feature a Terry Devlin clip in the current climate. Well done. Priceless!
ReplyDeleteI hope the likes of Penny Junor, Gyles Brandreth, Paul Burrell, Nicholas Witchell and the rest of these Palace Creepers read your blog. I never speak ill of the dead, but Norman St. Stevas - that little Maltese [That's enough. Thank you. Ed.]
Unfortunately, when they try out new royal "experts" on TV, they're invariably worse than the Old Guard. What the Terry Devlin sketches capture so perfectly is that tired old trick of trotting out lists of titles, dates and bits of "knowledge" which anyone could find online in 10 seconds - it reminds me of what Andrew Castle does whenever he's commentating on a tennis match for the BBC. because he has to fill the space occupied by adverts on other channels - "Hey, remember that absolutely classic Wimbledon final between Rafa and Roger in 2008. That was a great match. Went to a fifth set, and..." yes, we sodding well know, because we WATCHED it. Tell us something we don't know!
DeleteAn old boss of mine, Richard Sambrook surprised me by writing a newspaper piece a couple of years ago in which he said it was time to re-think 24 hour news, because you had to fill the time with endless live interviews full of pointless speculation, or correspondents in the field repeating what they'd just read on the web because they're too busy doing live interviews to actually find out what's going on where they are.
Don't get me wrong - I'm a monarchist, and I have no objection in principle to royal fluff on live TV - viewers want it: there just has to be a better way of doing it than having poor old Kay Burley standing in front of a posh hospital desperately trying to get any of her three supposedly expert, guest nonentities to say anything that even hints at some sort of inside knowledge.