21 Jul 2013

Outside the Limbo wing, the Great Kate Wait continues

The cameras are rolling and American broadcasters are busy doing live updates. But there’s no sign of a Royal baby yet.

St Mary’s Paddington. 11am. Sunday. A crowd of cameras, stepladders and fold-up chairs fill the pavement, writes Channel 4 News Correspondent Katie Razzall.

Baby Cambridge may not be in a rush to begin royal duties, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to report.

Well actually, there isn’t anything to report. But correspondents from around the world are busy doing “hits” as the American networks call them (that’s live updates to you and me) from outside the hospital.

Jim Maceda told me he was doing three or four hits a day and that he’s one of five (yes five) royal baby correspondents for NBC.

The journalists have become the story, which is a worry. Passers-by stop and take photographs. The live camera shows people passing, pausing, posing in front of the doors of the Lindo wing – but they’re not the people everyone’s hoping for.

So for those in the press pen, it’s a waiting game – the Great Kate Wait as they call it (NBC have put up 2 clocks showing New York time and London “Baby” time). Crosswords, burger boxes, stills cameras lie on the floor.

Photographer Ki Price has even got a tent set up where he snatches the odd hour or two of sleep. He’s been outside the hospital for 11 days and nights.

Others have been experiencing their own particular groundhog day for 23 days now. And still they wait.

It’s no doubt worse for the mum-to-be – awaiting an overdue baby isn’t fun, especially in summer. But we haven’t seen Kate for weeks. The media are very much on view. And you’ve got to feel sorry for them.

I left them to it. Channel 4 News will definitely be covering the birth of the royal baby when it happens. But the press pen of the Limbo wing – as it’s been dubbed – doesn’t need any extras in it quite yet.