20 years since the death of Princess Diana

That even longer than what ITV had.

But that's surely the whole point of all the rehearsing. The top of the programme is very formulaic just with a different name inserted.

That said they did kind of stumble onto air after they false start that left BBC Two hanging on a silent still ident for many minutes.

I'm not at all surpised by this.

During their Discussion on this subject during Thursday's episode of Loose Women, Jane Moore said that all of the Royal Corespondents were at a wedding in Kent when the news about the crash Came through meaning the wedding reception was stopped and all the Royal Corespondents grabbed a taxi back to London.

Yes, I think he was initially from the Penny Lane area before moving to Woolton. This is in the south of Liverpool which is generally considered the most affluent part of the city. I don't think he would have had a very strong Scouse accent if he grew up in Woolton - certainly not like parts of north Liverpool.

Referring to discussions in another thread, Aug 31st 1997 would have been STV's 40th Anniversary. Were any special programming or idents affected/cancelled due to the Princess's death and the wall-to-wall coverage?

It didn't get added to BT's fibre network, as I found out at a subsequent short-notice OB.

I know that, for some of the week's events, staff were drafted in from all over the place - I know some people in CCA who ended up being camera assistants on the funeral.

Yes, it's a little known fact that John Lennon had a fairly middle class upbringing in an affluent suburb outside of Liverpool City Centre.

St Pauls never had permanent connectivity, it would all have been microwave links into either Crystal Palace or the Swains Lane receiver. How do you do these things at short notice? Well, organisation and a decent filing system. Something that nowadays is far less common, jobs are changing while we are rigging them these days.

For the links, we had a large map on the wall with numbered pins in it showing sites we had used previously, and the midpoints they worked into. There was a file for each site, detailing contact names and all the old planning sheets.

St Pauls would have had its own file, so we knew how to do the links, and the names of those who had last worked there were on the old sheets. So the riggers, Engineering Manager, Sound, Vision and Comms all had working knowledge and diagrams (sometimes quite old ones). You'd try to get those staff on the job as first choice.

To get links out was quite quick, load a van and with the agreement of the building owner get the kit on the roof (in the case of St Pauls). Cabling might take a while, plus parking issues may not help, but a national event can make the logistics move faster.

The internal cabling could be labour intensive, but enough people thrown at it and anything can be achieved.,

I'll say it again. I was broadcasting that afternoon, and the PA 'snap' flashed up on my screen wires in the studio at 4.15, with a strict embargo until 5pm.

Either Peter was in canteen until 4.40 or something went very badly wrong with the pre-annoucment preparations, in claiming 'it was a surprise and I didn't have enough time to prepare'. You had 45 minutes, like the rest of us to head into obit mode.

But then IRN didn't cover themselves in glory announcing the news either.

What about ITN? She was reading the news and it she said oh we might be going back on air..

It's also documented in the ITV programme 'Newsflash - Stories that shook the World' that on the ITV News that evening Mary was not aware of the news until the news bulletin that she was anchoring had finished and they were in the ad break waiting to come back on the air to break the news.

Surely if the news was known about before and embargoed they wouldn't have ended the news bulletin and would have made arrangements with Network to remain on the air? Even if it meant shoehorning another standby story in until they could announce the news.

Indeed. You can hear the bulletin here... https://audioboom.com/posts/5763250-irn-announcement-death-of-queen-mother

As the Obit Alarm (now known as the Major Story Alarm) wasn't fired properly, the first many stations knew about it was when the national anthem was played at the top of the bulletin - wasn't the best moment when DJs either didn't have warning and plugged the usual Saturday night programming going into the news or stations had a bed underneath their news.