London Bridge Is Down

CBeebies (during the days it was on BBC Two) did do something during the day of the Queen Mother's funeral, in which Sue Monroe tells kids to join in the 2 minute silence to pay respect and it cuts 2 minutes of footage with the Queen Mother.

The tribute starts from 15:51 onwards.

It is, but with the conventions we have in this country for such things there's not really any choice.


I can't see that de-royalling the big institutions and currency would be popular and definitely wouldn't happen except under the most progressive of governments. Though the current Queen is the only monarch to appear on a standard bank note, it's not that old a thing


It is odd to think that in the US its fairly normal to have coins in your pocket tha come from the early 1900's. Unlike us they haven't changed their currency or coinage and use historic presidents. Here the oldest coin we have is the 20p which is 37 years old

There’s so many what-ifs, it’ll be very interesting to see how it’s handled. We know the BBC and ITN regularly do obit rehearsals - I don’t know if that ever involves Pres or just the first moment.

No doubt loads of lessons will have been learnt from 2002. They’ll obviously want to avoid hanging on the slide like they did on BBC Two (bit of a pain when news keep wanting another 30secs I guess) and you’d expect the plain logo ident for BBC One. I’m sure I read somewhere that Forest is no longer available.

If it’s at 8am on a Sunday morning, is Breakfast suitable? I’d presume not and that they’d hand over to Broadcasting House.

I wonder under what circumstances (if any) that generic BBC ident would be shown? I suppose it could be after the initial bulletin, assuming both channels would show the same programme. I’d have thought BBC Two would show an alternative though.

Anyway, let’s hope this time the ITN editor isn’t on holiday in the middle of nowhere again, shouting down the phone to get the f on air

Thanks for posting this. It's a nice bit of nostalgia from that era of CBBC - I know I'm a '97 BBC identity fanboy but I thought that CBBC branding and studio was fantastic at the time. All the little touches like the tiny screens on the back of the set and the random conveyor belt. Interesting to note that this is before they decided to colour coordinate the backgrounds of the idents - IIRC red for BBC One, purple for BBC Two and blue for CBBC Channel. It was mildly confusing seeing the red background on a recording from BBC Two. (I know, how sad am I).


The CBeebies bit is interesting, as most of it is presented by Pui Fan Lee and Chris Jarvis, who were the main launch presenters for the strand in 2002. But you then have a link going into Bill & Ben presented by someone else (apologies for not knowing her name) who also then does the link into the Queen Mother tribute. I wonder if those links were live and the rest pre-recorded?

Point of order: the current 1p and 2p were introduced 48 years ago

When I last saw an obituary rehearsal, one of the scenarios was the news breaking during Breakfast (with Bill and Sian, which gives you an idea of how long ago it was)

The name you're looking for is Sue Monroe.
I believe all continuity links for CBeebies are pre-recorded and has been always, for a reason which I do not know. I imagine the first set of links was recorded separately to the second as rummaging through the comments the link for Bill and Ben was a change in schedule (and Monroe even mentions this herself) due to the events.
CBBC doesn't seem to mention the 2 minutes silence. Is this perhaps to do with the timings of it all? (CBeebies being closer to the "slot")

Ah, I was sure they'd shrunk but I must be confusing them with the 5 and 10p.

The 5 and 10 are a good case in point btw - the pre-decimalisation 1 and 2 Shilling coins continued to be legal tender after decimalisation, as 5 and 10p respectively. I'm pretty sure I saw some examples with the previous King rather than QE2's head on in the 80s. So there is no need to replace all of our currency in one go.

Ah, I did pick up on her saying it was an extra programme but I stupidly assumed it to mean because it was half-term.


I would guess the reason it wasn't mentioned during the CBBC segment is that, as you say, it was scheduled to happen during the CBeebies strand (when most CBBC viewers will have turned over) and it's not really something suitable to talk about given the short, upbeat links between CBBC programmes (though I'm sure Dick & Dom would have done a great job at handling it if they needed to).

"Extra programme" is generally continuity announcer speak for something that wasn't in the schedules.

I don't see why it wouldn't be suitable, it is a news programme. It not being in BH isn't much of an issue, it might even be an advantage in some circumstances - they can prepare while Salford are on air.

Remember that they like to have a known presenter to break something like this. At 8am on Sunday it might be that one of the presenters in Salford is more well known than whoever is present at BH.



The idea of having a 'family' logo when all the networks are brought together was ditched before the Queen Mum died. I suspect it still is, there's not much point in it now there's a rolling news outlet that will take over from when the announcement is made