Queueing to see the Queen

I know very little about the ITV show This Morning, other than what I have had the grave misfortune to see when visiting people’s homes in my last job. Phillip Schofield I know a little bit from his childrens’ TV days and Holly Willoughby, nothing at all. But in recent days and weeks, I’ve learned a bit about their characters.

A popular part of the show is a game called ‘Spin to win‘. If you get on the show, Phil and Holly spin the wheel and you win whatever is shown on the spinning wheel. In a strange, dystopian twist, one of the prizes on offer in recent weeks was energy bills. Yes, if your luck was in, Phil and Holly would pay your energy bills for a year. In coming weeks, you will have the chance to have dialysis, triple bypass heart surgery and haemorrhoid shrinkage.

Having subsequently seen the actual clip on video, it was gobsmacking to see two multimillionaires treating such a serious subject with such insensitively. I am not an expert on the demographic of people who watch This Morning but at a guess quite a number will be in or close to fuel poverty in the coming weeks and months, if they aren’t already. What were they thinking about? Spoiler alert: they weren’t thinking at all.

An aberration, perhaps? They’re lovely people really. Just the same as us. Except that we now learn that the TV funsters jumped the queue at Westminster Hall, joining the VIP lane, to avoid having to hang around. Schofield and Willoughby, Very Important People? On what possible basis was that decided? Two modestly talented TV presenters deemed to be more important than Joe and Josephine Public? Really?

Yep. There they are. Away from the little people, looking suitably serious. But not all celebrities decided there was no need to queue. Fellow TV presenter Susanna Reid queued for seven hours with the lower orders and David Beckham, bless him, arrived at 2.00am to do the same. Be cynical if you like and say he only did it for the publicity. Because Beckham really needs favourable publicity, doesn’t he? I put it to you that he queued like everyone else because, once upon a time before superstardom came along, he was like us and he hasn’t forgotten.

Queuing to see a coffin is not for me. I’ve seen too many coffins this summer containing people I have known and loved. I felt no joy, just overwhelming sadness. I felt no desire to ‘pay my respects’, definitely the cliché of this period of mourning, to our late monarch. But if I had, I would not at any stage considered jumping the queue because I was somehow regarded as better and more important than mere riff raff. Annoyed? No, not really. We’ve had a tendency in recent years to bow at the sight of mediocrity, to embrace people of limited talent, hence the viewing figures for I’m A Celebrity and Love Island. And maybe This Morning, too.

I don’t know if Schofield and Willoughby are semi-detached from reality or even attached to it at all. But their recent behaviour does not suggest any form of connection with real people who have bills to pay and who queue like everyone else. They aren’t the worst of us – they’re not important enough to even be considered in that category – but David Beckham represents the best of us. And he’s a proper star.