THE BBC’s wall-to-wall coverage of the macabre pomp and ceremony following the Queen’s death has angered, annoyed, bored and generally bothered most not utterly obsessed with the royal family.
Even BBC Question Time favourite and letter-writer-in-chief for the Unionist cause Jane Lax described it as “dire”.
The TV coverage at times of the Queen's death has been dire. There is only so much you can say over hours and hours of coverage. I endured 3 and a half hours of radio coverage today on Radio 5 live as my audiobook was rubbish. It made the TV coverage appear Oscar worthy. pic.twitter.com/dBA8ZuKUIf
— Jane Lax - proud of Scotland, SNP are not Scotland (@Janela_X) September 14, 2022
But amid Nicholas Witchell pontificating on the late monarch’s feelings about independence and the plainly incorrect assertion the Protestant reformer John Knox “cleared the Catholics out of Scotland” (a suggestion met with laughter by other presenters), there have been some moments of sanity among the coverage.
Enter Alan Little, a veteran BBC presenter who led the broadcaster’s controversial coverage of the 2014 independence referendum.
To the rumoured annoyance of Gordon Brown and the Scottish Secretary, Little stated some plain facts about the political state of play.
The Telegraph reports he said on the Ten O’Clock News on Monday that Scotland had been “diverging from the rest of the UK politically for 40 years, where support for independence is as high as it’s ever been”.
Well, what’s wrong with that? It’s basically correct, isn’t it?
Not if you’re the former PM or Alister Union Jack who were said to be privately fizzing about the comments.
They may have become catatonic when the BBC man added that Charlie’s reign could be defined by the “eventual dissolution of the United Kingdom itself”.
Someone who is not Brown appears to have complained to the Telegraph that Little’s lines echo that of the SNP. They might also echo authoritative works on the recent political history of Scotland and the Union, but that’s beside the point.
A "source close to" Alister Union Jack added: “The BBC should really not be introducing the independence debate into the Queen’s death - there’s no link.”
Little’s comments came amid a veritable tsunami of political interventions by BBC pundits, talking heads and hacks who wondered idly about the Queen’s diplomatic role (did she bring about peace in Northern Ireland?) and her apparently grave concern the country she spent her summer holidays in could become foreign.
There was significantly less noise from the Unionist press about those musings, needless to say.
Jack had sufficiently recovered himself to take on a role standing guard at the Queen’s coffin in Westminster today, in his role as a member of the Royal Company of Archers – the monarch’s Scottish bodyguard.
