Looks furtively around. Bins 74-page Pope special editions.
It is just possible that our illustrious news media have gone a little bit overboard on the Pope tributary. It's very hard to judge from the inside. And even harder to keep good-taste antennae set to maximum alert when deadlines loom.
The way in which we all monitored every nuance of medical decline inside the papal organism on Saturday while trying to build pages for first edition was plain ghoulish. Black humour and respect tussled inelegantly around the news desk. Bad taste momentarily had the day - by pure accident - when the page with the leader comments was about to go to press. We had decided to switch the positions on the page of an economics leader and the leader on the Pope's last hours. But in an earlier version the standfirst for the celebration of Gordon Brown's economic management read 'the Well Man of Europe' - an accolade that, because of the hasty swap, was seconds away from appearing in the newspaper under the name Karol Wojtyla. Very red faces narrowly averted.
Meanwhile, the blog hears from its numerous deep throats in other media agencies that dilemmas about how long the blanket mourning should last are widespread. One well-placed source at a national radio station reports the following exchange from Saturday.
DJ: So what do we do if the Pope snuffs it. Maximum obit-mode?
Producer: Naa. Just put on some Coldplay or something.
Blog good taste ombudsperson glimpsed fleeing the building in terror.
