April 22, 2016

Journalists have thrown in the towel and admitted the complexity of overlapping events is too much for them after Prince died on the Queen’s birthday.

The puzzle of giving due coverage on a single front page to both a monarch’s birthday and the death of a man whose name means son of a monarch led many to go home and put the kettle on.

National newspapers are divided this morning over which event to pretend did not happen. An attempt by one to recognise both has resulted in the headline: ‘Prince dies on mother’s birthday.’

Fleet Street production editor Hunter Wolf said: “The front page had been signed off, with a picture of Her Majesty smiling joyously and the headline ‘This old woman 90 and it Queen.’ It wasn’t perfect but it was settled.

“Then at the last minute we hear a Prince has died. I can’t untangle those events in my mind, let alone on a front page.

“I changed it to ‘Queen’s joy as Prince dies,’ but the editor felt something was missing. So I wrote ‘World’s sorrow as Queen turns 90’ and finally ‘Queen’s delight as world mourns Prince.’

“Then I went home and set up a PR company.”