Reflections on the royal wedding - media

The media build up to the day itself was, to put it mildly, frothing. On the day itself the event was as inescapable as gravity. It started with the Today programme on Radio four. This is normally a programme that follows a rather tight format, they have some spurious stories about the latest survey showing that red wine cures smallpox or something, a bit of sport and then the main event, which is one of the two remarkably offensive old gits that present the thing having a go at a politician about something. Since they banned badger fights it's about the only blood sport left and tends to leave the listener exhausted and bitter and still to face the day.

Instead of a belligerent bully belittling a windbag minister, we had jolly presenters out talking to the crowds that had already started to line the route. Surely the BBC missed a trick here, because the questions were uniformally of the 'where have you come from?' and 'are you looking forward to seeing the dress?' variety. I would have liked to have heard the same level of rigour and challenge that is aimed at politicians aimed at some loyalist royalist, with interruptions, accusations of factual inaccuracies and downright insults, although I appreciate that hearing a BBC presenter being beaten to death with his own microphone is not to everyone's taste.