The grief police

Since Friday morning, when Prince Philip shuffled off this mortal coil, 100 people in the UK have died from COVID-19, along with those who died because of other stuff. Today, we commemorate the loss of my mother in law who was taken by COVID-19 exactly a year ago. I do not expect the media to carry stories about any of these people but, by the same token, the endless fawning heavily padded-out ‘news’ stories about Philip that are clogging up our airwaves are beginning to wear me out. Am I alone in feeling this way?

The vast majority of people who have died in recent days did not reach the age of 99. Many will have been young, some will have died in traumatic circumstances. There will have been 100 family tragedies from which some people will never recover. It feels to me we now need some kind of perspective, but judging from some of the scenes yesterday perspective is a commodity in very short supply.

Despite pleas from everyone, including the royal family themselves, people left their collective marbles at home and visited royal buildings. Many hundreds gathered at Buckingham Palace, including one one seemingly unhinged man dressed in an improvised Queen’s Guard outfit, complete with a charity shop busby. Many others stood together, not wearing masks, queuing to leave flowers, again something the royals specifically asked folk not to do and to instead donate to a charity. For some reason, the police chose not to instruct this illegal gathering to move on and forcibly remove them. Odd, that.

The BBC has still completely lost the plot, broadcasting hours of drooling adoration to Philip. Indeed, we were treated to some of his ‘hilarious’ anecdotes, like when he met with British university students who were studying Mandarin in Xi’an, telling one of them: “By the time you go back home you’ll have slitty eyes.” Or when he met an Indigenous Australian entrepreneur he asked: “Do you still throw spears at each other?” The “slitty eyes” anecdote was repeated on BBC Five Live this morning by the writer Robert Lacey. The clearly embarrassed presenter Eleanor Oldroyd felt moved to mutter something about how we would quite phrase things like that nowadays, except of course that there are plenty of people who absolutely still do phrase things just like that. It was only one of Big Phil’s gaffes, wasn’t it?

Of course, it’s not just the BBC that has lost its mind. Much of the media acts like nothing else is happening in the world. And thanks to the decision of the royals to schedule the old boy’s funeral at 3.00pm next Saturday afternoon, every single sporting organisation will feel obliged to postpone their events. Perhaps I am a bit of an oddball, but I don’t enjoy funerals at the best of times, even less so when I have never met the deceased. I would not dream of attending the funeral of a stranger, so why should I feel the need to watch one on the telly? But, it seems, an alternative choice will be denied to me. I suspect that pubs and shops will be expected to close for the duration of the ceremony ‘in respect’. Then, we will all be permitted to resume our own lives. Thanks for that.

Since COVID-19 struck our islands, over 150,000 people have died. In my world, one has been a relative, some others were friends. They were afforded a national minute of silence and that was it. And that, I suspect, was more than enough for most people. For many, these have been the worst of times and so it is for the royal family. But perspective, please. The media grief police will probably be out there in the days ahead, waiting to discover whether we are enjoying ourselves too much or simply smiling when we’re supposed to be crying. The grief police were there, on steroids, when Princess Diana died and it became a near hanging offence to not weep on the streets. All I can say is you grieve over someone you don’t know, by all means, but I will remember those I did.