Deference

It's pretty clear m'learned friends have been working over Christmas.

The Radio Times has a scoop; the BBC has pulled a two-part documentary, Reinventing The Royals, with the first episode originally slotted for this coming Sunday. The show has been hastily replaced by something called Racing Legends, with little detail.

The Radio Times looks likely to have acquired the scoop because its latest edition carries a preview feature by Steve Hewlett, writer and presenter of Reinventing The Royals. In careful language, it reports "Radio Times understands that the decision to postpone BBC2's transmission of Reinventing The Royals came after an intervention from lawyers known to represent senior members of the royal family, including the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall". The BBC's response is worthy of Mapp and Lucia; it says transmission has been delayed "until a number of issues including use of archive footage" has been resolved.

Steve, often active on Twitter, is strangely silent on the matter thus far.