From Our Royal Correspondent

Being a royal correspondent must rank as one of the cushiest jobs in journalism. Imagine it. You sit around all year waiting for someone with a Windsor surname to either open a hospital, christen a baby, or shuffle off the mortal coil. In between, you get paid to write breathless essays on what colour frock a duchess has chosen or how many corgis can fit in a Bentley. That is not reporting, it is embroidery.

The truth is that most days the Windsors do absolutely nothing of note. They breakfast, they potter, they shoot pheasants. So the poor correspondent has to pad. “Sources say” becomes the lifeline. A butler’s cousin whispers that a tiara is in for polishing and suddenly it is a story about dynastic symbolism and the modern role of monarchy. A charity patronage visit is spun into a seismic intervention in public life. A royal baby sneezes and Fleet Street produces eight pages of analysis on the constitutional implications of a runny nose.

And then there is the case of Nicholas Witchell. By the late nineties he had already been packed off from the serious news desk to become the BBC’s Royal Correspondent, which in newsroom terms is like being told your best years are behind you. Then, to add insult to injury, Charles – still Prince of Wales at the time – was caught on a microphone at Klosters muttering to his sons that he detested Witchell. Here was one of the BBC’s most seasoned journalists, reduced to covering hats and handshakes, only to be sneered at in public by the very people he was paid to dignify. If ever proof were needed that the royal beat is where careers are sent to die, that was it.

That is the dirty secret of the job. It looks like a glamorous posting but in reality it is a pasture for the semi-retired. Once you are there, you rarely escape. The newsroom treats you as half journalist, half palace press officer. You become a permanent appendage to the monarchy, translating raised eyebrows into headlines, and the only thing left to look forward to is a state funeral.

The irony piles up. When something genuinely big does happen, like a death or a constitutional crisis, royal correspondents look the most ill equipped of all. They have spent years commenting on fascinators and suddenly they are expected to provide gravitas. It is like asking the bloke who does the shipping forecast to cover a hurricane.

So what do they do when the royals are quiet? They sit and wait. They fill the silence with endless tittle tattle. They pretend embroidery is news. For most journalists that would be a career-ending humiliation. For the royal correspondent, it is the job description.