Eventful

So much to cover since we last struck the keyboard.

It was a rocky Today programme. There must have been times when it came close to being "Wake Up with Uncle Nick". Martha Kearney channelled the act of Norman Collier, compounded by a delay on her line the length of early Telstar conversations. Guest after guest swirled as if using their mobiles from the bottom of off-signal wells. Martha leapt in, after what felt like two seconds of hiss-free silence.  Thought for Today became meaningless, delivered on a combination of a last-century Nokia and comb-and-tissue-paper. As the show staggered on, The Blessed Nick moved into his emerging stage act, based on Wilfred Pickles playing Donald Runcie, and proffered the nation's best wishes to Our Prime Minister. And The Queen thought she had old-style broadcasting nailed....

Her Majesty, sensibly pre-recorded, played her video tape to the nation at 2000 Sunday, and her number 2, Boris Johnson went to hospital, revealed by No 10 at 2110. Which story mattered most to the BBC Weekend News team, at 2205?  They stuck with their elegantly-constructed Queen headline and package sequence. I reckon 97.5% of the News audience had seen the whole thing earlier. The 'new' news, the details of our elected leader running the country from an NHS hospital bed, probably on a saline drip and in a hospital gown, came five and half minutes in.

And then, the nation's news anchor, Huw Edwards, a model of Instagram health and efficiency, revealed that he'd been treated for pneumonia in King's College Hospital, Camberwell - but was ready for a return to work.

Wot next ?