No doubt millions of people felt a heartfelt attachment to the queen, which will be displayed fully in the next few days. But the anachronistic nature of monarchy is also fully on display, in the obvious absurdities and pantomime procedure, with Heralds Pursuivant and royals buckled with the weight of their unearned medals. 

Yesterday some BBC stenographer had to type with a straight face the strapline "The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge Are Now the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and Cambridge," which would even 50 years ago have already been absurd enough to be a line in a Monty Python sketch. Still more absurd is the millions in feudal income that goes with that title, all real money paid by actual ordinary people as feudal dues.

The plans for the queen's demise were organised decades ago and it shows. The BBC, ITV and Channels 4 and even 5 stop all entertainment in favour of pre-prepared sycophancy, as though we still lived in a world where people could not switch over and watch Gordon Ramsay on Blaze instead — and that's ignoring Netflix, Amazon and the entire internet. 

I watched a few minutes of the BBC last night, up until a "royal commentator" said that people were standing outside Buckingham Palace because the nation needed to draw together for physical comfort in its great grief. There were a couple of hundred of them. Broadcasters kept focusing on a dozen bouquets left on a pavement in a desperate attempt to whip up people to produce more. 

I do not doubt this will all work and there will indeed be big crowds and carpets of flowers. Many people felt a great deal of devotion to Elizabeth II, or rather to the extraordinarily sanitised image of her with which they were presented.