Jubilee celebrations marred by explanations

As our TV companies seek ever more radical formats to stay fresh in the eyes of their audience, here’s my suggestion for future landmark Royal occasions. One born of the realisation that many of those who groaned at the weekend’s blanket Jubilee coverage aren’t so much anti-Royal as anti-noise.

Next time, TV people, don’t send your reporters out among the crowds, covering every available angle with increasing desperation and continuing to draw from the well of superlatives several hours after it ran dry.

Instead, keep Balding, Hollins, Jones at al nice and dry in a studio, with no cameras and just several phones and laptops for company.

Then just film the event as it is, with the pictures supported purely by the noise of the crowd and the atmosphere of the occasion, while an email address and phone number fill the bottom right hand corner of the screen.

That way, should we have any questions or inexplicable cravings for the trite or banal, we email or ‘phone your reporters to see if they can oblige.

Thus does the viewer get as much as he wants out of the big day and no more.

Have your reporters take a good book into that studio with them, by the way. It could be a slow afternoon.

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PS That idea you picked up from American TV, incidentally – bunching your anchors closer than the back-row crowd in a cinema for added ‘cosiness’ – it doesn’t work.

Matt Baker and Sophie Raworth were so up close and personal by the end of Sunday’s Jubilee broadcast, I half expected the cameras to cut back to studio to reveal Baker clutching Raworth’s knickers in his teeth.

Forget ‘cosy’. Try ‘professional’.