The Birth of Prince George of Cambridge
AKA "Operation Quingmaker"
Hop in your time machine and pop back a few years. If you manage to find me, ask if I can imagine ever dreaming about aluminium. Not just in passing but nearly every night for over a week; aluminium. Time-jumped and a slightly more hirsute Leon may either deny the possibility or call for the police, depending on where you had managed to catch up with him.
Leap forward in time to any day in the last week, and I would have been eating my stupid words as I turned off my bedroom light and drifted to sleep, with my mind full of shining aluminium stepladders as far as the eye can see.
This regal birthing session has been one of the most draining jobs that I've ever had to cover, due partly to my ongoing recovery from a motorbike crash, and partly to the sheer tedium of it. It became a war of attrition between the world's media and an amniotic membrane but let's not get ahead of ourselves here. My involvement with the whole process came a little later than some, and MUCH later than the poor sods from the broadcast networks who manned their positions on a 24 hour rota for over three weeks. Having said that, you would be amazed at how quickly the creative juices can begin to dry up when faced with the same stepladders, Royalists and media features for the sixth or seventh day in a row.
Marking-up duties had been admirably handled by AFP freelancers Andrew Cowie and Justin Tallis, with a near-dead on central position in the Palace-approved position, and a great spread of other spots along the length of the 150m press pen. Maps were shared and photos were filed, illustrating the views from each position on a variety of lenses, plus a "Royals-eye" view from the steps to get an idea of the spread we aimed to achieve. Due to me still whining like I'd survived a plane crash, I was assigned the hospital watch for a good chunk of the week, as it involved no movement aside from a taxi journey at the start and end of each day.
Aside from the daily ladder pictures, the attending photographers were saved by the wonderful (and bored) people of NBC who not only started the whole stepladder slogan tag trend that made the rounds, but also created the baby sweepstake, mounted the New York/London Baby Time clocks and even came up with the hashtag "#thebigkatewait", (that was later improved to #greatkatewait).
Despite NBC's valiant efforts to entertain the troops, it wasn't enough to get us through repeated eight-hour shifts, which leads me on nicely to the next big thing; PR stunts.
It amazed me how long it took Soho's supposedly red-hot PR companies to realise that they had a captive audience, hungry for content, 24 hours a day, but after a few days they finally caught on. I can only apologise to those who follow me on Twitter through the dullest hours of the shift, as I attempted to test the power of social media regarding feeding the team. While there were deliveries from flip-flop manufacturers, sushi restaurants, coffee shops, iced lolly vendors and drinks companies, the highest accolades must go to a chosen few. Firstly Abru stepladders drove all the way from Belper in Derbyshire, with a transit van full of high-quality ladders to give to the media, after seeing the state of the paint-speckled supports that we were currently standing on. One of the team who brought them down even admitted that she'd been nervous on the two and a half hour drive that we wouldn't accept them and think it was daft. Oh, how little you know press photographers. Second up was Dominos for delivering a stack of pizzas to a starving horde. Thirdly, Lipton's Iced Tea brought ridiculous day-glo shades for us all, creating a whole flood of decidedly stupid Instagram pictures. Finally, M&S for the constant drip-feeding delivery of Percy Pigs. While I did love them, I'm not sure I could ever eat another. On the plus side, they did make cracking ammunition in the inter-pen food fights that occasionally broke out.
The only company to enter the afore-mentioned Hall of Shame is Kit-Kat for handing out free ice creams to photographers, reporters and television crews, then initially labelling the photos they took on their Facebook page with the caption calling us all "paparazzi". As is the way, this then led to half of the comments being from disgruntled photographers complaining about the "P" word and half from people claiming that we'd killed Diana, in between nibbles of our ice cream. Joy. Aside from the blatant freebie-grabbing, there was also a steady procession of lookalikes to pass the time. First up was a really rather good Prince Harry, promoting a toy manufacturer. Having got him in front of the main door, there was a single moment of perfect alignment. Every character of the GreatKateWait story came together; the Royalist eccentrics, the over-the-top publicity stunts, the heightened security and the poor hospital staff who had to try to continue work as normal despite the stepladder mountain and steady stream of onlookers.
The other lookalike visit was from Kate and William themselves, or rather a very convincing Kate and a man with a big chin who looked vaguely Sloane Square-ish. The arrival actually managed to fool a few people with Dickie Arbiter, the former press secretary to the Queen, going as far as tweeting that they'd arrived before hastily correcting himself when he realised the perils of reporting breaking news. Having arrived in a convoy of cars, the "Royal couple" dashed up the Lindo Wing stairs, reached the clearly blocked door, paused for a moment before turning to reveal their Sun newspaper t-shirts. It goes without saying that security were less than impressed.
While The Sun could afford to get hold of a believable Kate lookalike, others opted for a more budget approach to their stunts, complete with jumpers for pregnancy bumps.
Another over-photographed element was the gambling website promotions that were there on a daily basis, with everything ranging from Gilliam-esque giant crying babies to the more traditional media approach of good-looking-woman-with-a-sandwich-board.
The final pieces to the set of public relations "I Spy" challenges were the Royalists in all of their patriotic glory. Any of you with a good memory and the misfortune to be a regular reader will recognise Mr Terry Hutt from my Lomography Spinner blog of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations. A nice chap, and one of the few whose sanity you never really question, despite his rather eccentric behaviour.
Aside from that, it was just a matter of sitting and waiting. So that's what we did. The crews topped up their tans, the reporters interviewed each other, the photographers attempted to find new angles and everyone settled in for the long haul.
Then, it happened. I was woken by an early morning call, with reports that Kate's car had been seen at the back of the hospital. She was finally in! From this point on, the features were over, the official pen was opened and the serious business began. The first day came and went and I headed home after thirteen hours with no sign of movement. As I arrived at my front door, my phone beeped; the baby was born. Damn it! Surely, she wouldn't leave that night. Surely? Crossing my fingers that I wasn't going to end up missing everything, I headed to bed, ready for an early start the next day.
Arriving at 6am, all love for the story was now gone from the press pen. Everyone just looked exhausted. The fear that she wouldn't come out on the second day either, resulting in yet another day outside the Lindo was a real possibility. A kind of mania set in as we waited for news. Just before lunch, a message came from a Palace spokesman, there would be no movement from Kate until either after 6pm, or possibly the next day. Afternoon visits from the Middletons, followed by Charles and Camilla were further reinforcement to our doubts. Why would they be visiting if the baby was leaving today?
It fell on Prince Charles to finally put us out of our misery, responding to a question on how the baby looked from a journalist with, "You'll see for yourself in a moment". Yes.
After an hour or so of tense waiting, the doors opened and there he was, Prince George of Cambridge. Shooting live, I was transmitting my images straight from my camera to my picture editor, as we all knew that within moments of them first being seen, the 3G and 4G networks would grind to a halt. Even though there would be cleaner and stronger images within a minute of the first glimpse, it was vital to beat the tsunami of data that was set to clog the systems. Thankfully, the plan paid off with a number of sources confirming that this picture was the first photo of the future King to hit the wire. While it's far from the best picture I've ever taken, it's quite a pleasing claim to photographic history!
Thankfully, the Duke and Duchess displayed their media awareness perfectly with a pause at the top of the steps, a pause at the bottom and a brief Q&A for a couple of select journalists, giving us plenty of time to fill our cards. When I say fill, I mean it. I glanced at my camera network queue once they had returned into the hospital to find 560+ images lined up for transmission! Oops! A very quick de-selection frenzy began in earnest.
Through all of this, the one thing that I hadn't been expecting at this exact moment was to be involved in a fight but that's what happened next. As Kate and William returned inside to pop George into his baby-seat, a man decided it was his time to see what was going on by bursting through the press area from the back and pushing over ladders, trampling laptops and shouting threats. Claiming to be from CNN and "needing to get a picture on his camera phone", he was repeatedly warned by photographers to get out and soon blows were being thrown. Considering we were a few metres away from two generations of future British King, the police took what seemed like ages to respond, despite me shouting down the street for their help. Eventually, someone realised that it might be worth investigating, and the guy was last seen being dragged into a nearby coffee shop by his throat. Welcome to the world, Prince George. Just be glad you're going to grow up in a castle.
