Anyone who knows anything about Britain knows there are few things we take more seriously than our queuing.
If queuing and waiting our turn were Olympic sports, we would have clinched the title and gold medals more times than anyone else.
I always find it astonishing when visiting countries like the United States and see
how little respect is paid to queueing – people simply barge to the front to bark their question rather than wait patiently to be seen.
So quite what This Morning presenters Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby were thinking when it appeared they bypassed the queues to pay their respects to the late Queen is beyond me.
The ITV pair have since faced a massive backlash for apparently jumping the queue to see the Queen lying-in-state.
While thousands – including David Beckham and Susanna Reid lined up patiently for hours – the telly duo sidestepped the crowds and headed straight for the press entrance.
The problem is this wasn’t the Brit Awards or the BAFTAs where stars are used to swanning past the great unwashed and sauntering up the red carpet. This was meant to be a moment of national unity, where anyone, -whatever their status in life, should have had an equal opportunity to say goodbye to the late monarch.
Given they weren’t allowed to film inside and could only use the approved feed, the question remains why even go inside? They say they were there as “working journalists” – a claim which has only been met with scorn by the public – almost 37,000 of whom have signed a petition calling for the pair to be sacked.
I don’t agree with this type of witch-hunt at all. Did they make a mistake, yes? But is it “orf” with their heads time? Of course not.
It’s easy for people to sit behind their keyboards and trash the TV pair – most -probably don’t even watch This Morning and more still probably weren’t in the queue themselves.
If I had been advising Phil and Holly I would have told them it’s time they held their hands up and say you know what, on this occasion we got it wrong and sincerely apologise. Trying to justify their actions, even if they felt right at the time, will only prolong the issue.
Alongside queuing, “cancelling” people is something we also seem to have excelled in recently.
But what good can come from hounding two morning telly presenters, especially when there are far bigger things to worry about? In the words of the late Caroline Flack: “In a world where you can be anything, be kind.”
