Prince Philip in hospital

I hope Nick Witchell didn't have any last minute Christmas shopping to do - it looks like he'll be holed up in the News Channel studio for most of the day. He was hinting that it's unusual for the Queen to visit "so promptly" - and when the Duke was in hospital previously, she didn't visit at all during his three day stay.

Look East's Alex Dunlop is reporting from Sandringham today - I think they'd normally have a Network presenter down there for the regular 'Queen goes to church' story on Christmas Day.

It all might come to nothing, but perhaps this is this year's rather large Christmas news story...

Don't want to be morbid, but maybe someone should keep all eyes on BBC One incase anything unfortunate happens.

I wonder if we'll see a repeat of the "black ties on all channels" non-event that happened a few years ago.

I suspect that if there was any likelihood of obit mode being required there would be embargoes on the news of him going into hospital?

While Look East colleague Mike Cartwright has been reporting from Papworth Hospital - though he seems to crop up on the news channel from time to time anyway.

Louisa Baldini is now at Papworth.

That would be difficult to handle though as lots of well wishers outside the gates of Sandringham and TV viewers would be likely to question his absence when the Royal Family visit church tomorrow.

As we know from what the Palace has said everything is OK with Philip and he is in as precautionary now following his operation. It will be interesting to see tomorrow what happens, if he gets released tomorrow.

Oi, you!!! LOL. LOL. LOL.

Well, my dearest Phil, it wasn't just black ties. It was black everything.

I am sure Phillip will be fine.

I know quite a few radio stations today setting up their obit playlists just incase. If the worst come to the worst, would BBC One drop the festive schedule, or could the BBC One programmes get shifted to BBC Three for example?

I think i remember that, was it about 5 years or more so ago. The next morning it was announced Ronnie Barker had died. I'm pretty sure it was the evening before there was a big thread on here about all in black.

They could always embargo the news until Boxing Day. Remember royal news isn't like other news that is announced when the news agencies find out, it's announced when the royal family say it can be announced.

Yeah it could even be a life support job until Boxing Day if that was to happen.

Also, would it be the BBC glass cubes used to cue the news?

Even if British media outlets were reverent enough to wait until Boxing Day, foreign news channels would certainly break the story if they had sufficient confirmation. To me, a news organization being aware of a major news story but then waiting for two days before breaking it, just to appease an official body, sounds like a very problematic journalistic stance. (That's what communist news organizations and the old French ORTF used to do.)