When Teresa May resigned as prime minister - how long ago? - she resigned publicly in a live broadcast on radio and TV. This prompted an angry response from some viewers, who complained that they had missed the latest episode of "Homes Under the Hammer", which had been cancelled in favour of Mrs May's broadcast.
When Prince Philip passed away on April 9, the BBC cleared its TV schedule to "cover the news" of his passing. It received 109, 741 complaints from viewers who missed Eastenders and the Masterchef final, among other programmes. This is a record number of complaints for any BBC programmes, and the Corporation acknowledged this, issuing a statement:
"We do not make such changes without careful consideration and the decisions made reflect the role the BBC plays as the national broadcaster, during moments of national significance."Personally speaking, I was annoyed to miss "Have I Got News For You?", but didn't complain. Even I recognised that this was a moment of national significance. I suppose it might be expected that I'd make some ultra-leftist statement dismissing the Prince and his family as relics of the royalistic-bourgeoisie, man. Well, I'm no royalist, but that does not stop me from sympathising on a human level with a bereaved family. As Mikhail Bakunin said: "Socialism is not cruel".
What irritated me, and doubtless a lot of other people, was the repetitive and tedious regurgitating of eulogies to the Prince. The BBC morning news broadcasts made the same tributes, word for word, at the start of every hour the morning after his death. Some of the accolades were strange, also; they ranged from people who had worked closely with the Prince to people he'd waved to once from a passing car. One particularly adulatory pundit was the Prince's biographer, the ex-Tory MP, Gyles Brandreth. He seems to have featured in every studio discussion and every outside broadcast. After a while, he seemed to turn into an epithet machine with a limited programmed vocabulary, telling the same anecdotes and making the same statements of praise over and over again.
I found all this acclamation of the prince rather surprising. During his lifetime, he was the butt of criticism from media commentators. The press always focussed upon his famous gaffes and his general tactlessness; more critical commentators drew attention to his possible dalliances with society ladies and the Nazi pasts of some of his German relatives. That vanished overnight, following his passing. I was amazed to learn of his work as an eco-warrior in the World Wild Life Fund; his heroism as a naval officer; a star Polo player for 60+ years; he was an established author of 14 books. All this was suspiciously new to me, although I had heard of the Duke of Edinburgh's Award Scheme. It has been suggested that the BBC, at least, was so effusive because they had been criticised by the Palace for under-reporting the funeral of the Queen Mother. Well, perhaps, but I predict that, in a year or maybe sooner, someone will write a less-than-hagiographic biography of the prince. The repetitive reporting of the Prince's passing might lead to an idiom: "Prince Philip has died", meaning: "Tell me something I didn't know already" or "That's old news". And there is a precedent for this.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, if someone told you something well known already, a common retort was: "Queen Anne's dead". This last of the Stuart monarchs had no living heir, having tragically lost 14 children, all at an early age. Because of this, the crown of Britain was due to pass to her sister's husband, George of Hanover. During the Queen's last days, there was great apprehension as to whether or not civil war would break out between Stuarts and Hanoverians following Anne's death.. In the event, there was no war. As Stack Exchange says:
" When Queen Anne finally died, her death was not announced until it was clear that George of Hanover would become George I of Great Britain and that there would be no war. By the time of the official announcement of the Queen's death to the public, everybody who mattered already knew that she had died."
And so "Queen Anne's dead" became the 18th century equivalent of "That's old news".
But in the late 19th/early 20th century, another such phrase came into being...
Anyone who has the slightest knowledge of the Boer War, 1899 - 1902, knows that the British Army did not perform very well at first. The government and press needed inspiring heroes to keep up public morale and they found a hero in Lord Robert Baden-Powell, the future founder of the Boy Scouts. Under his leadership, a small British garrison held out for seven months and four days in the town of Mafeking in what is now the North-West Province of South Africa. The siege caught the imagination of the British public and when the town was finally relieved on 17 May, 1900, there was wild public rejoicing in London and elsewhere, as well as extensive and repetitive reporting of the event in the newspapers, giving rise to the word "mafficking" for wild public celebration.
It also gave rise to a new retort for the person who told you what you knew already: "Yes, I know. Mafeking's been relieved."
Will this lead to us retorting "Yes, I know, Prince Philip has died" to old news? I don't know, but I might try it.
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