29 Jul 2013
Now I like a baby as much as the next person, (even though they make an incredible amount of noise and without exception look like Winston Churchill) but I do wonder whether we might have gone a teensy weensy bit over the top with this one.
As poor Kate pushed and panted and shrieked and sweated on the hottest day of the year, the world’s media was drawn to the hospital like a Jimmy Choo to a doggy poo. Expert after expert was called upon to comment on what was actually happening at that very moment. From the following eight or so hours of drivel disguised as news I gleaned that a pregnant woman of chid bearing age had gone into hospital, presumably to give birth. One BBC reporter showed remarkable insight when he pointed out there was: “plenty more to come from here, none of it news – but that won’t stop us”. Although that could have been an early sign of heat stroke.
It took mere seconds for the world to jump on the baby bandwagon and use it to flog stuff. A budget airline offered cheap flights if it was a boy and even cheaper if it was a girl under the banner “Ryan Heir”, tabloid press printed “souvenir” editions of “The Son” and Marks and Spencer made a special biscuit tin, one of which you can win if you retweet its picture. And just when I thought reason might resume its seat, restaurant owner Dom Crolla tweeted a picture of a pizza whose topping was shaped into the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge holding their new born, along with the suggestion that if a girl, the babe should be called Margherita. Prompting the question: who has that kinda time?
Now I don’t mean to be a party pooper, I really don’t, but the arrival of the 3rd in line to the throne does not make me want to eat junk food or fly to another jurisdiction. It does make me wonder if we haven’t just experienced some kind of mass lunacy.
This event is the birth of a child. A privileged, unusual, royal child, but a child nonetheless.
Photo credit Domenico Crolla
