An unexpected interruption to the Today programme on Radio 4 when the national anthem burst into life just before 7am on Friday. To what did listeners owe that honour? Why, it’s the Prince of Wales’s birthday, of course! (He was 66 on Friday, as if you didn’t know.) HRH is not the only one who gets to hear the tune on their big day, with the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh also honoured on the BBC’s airwaves. “We look to mark significant royal occasions in an appropriate way and allow networks to decide how best to do this,” said a BBC spokesman with an appropriate doff of the cap. Not long ago Radio 4 used to play the anthem not once but twice. However, following a BBC review of this sort of thing in 1998 – a decade and a half before W1A – it was decided to reduce it to one. Cutbacks, see? It could have been worse – the corporation briefly gave consideration to playing it on “significant” royal birthdays only, whereupon Buckingham Palace said such a change would be “sad”. Duty done.
