Good morning. It's three minutes after 10, and I suppose it's tempting in some quarters to reflect upon

the length of the waiting lists for ordinary cancer patients or to wonder at the scale of the news coverage,

but you'll forgive me, I hope, for not doing that today. I do understand why some people do,

and I do understand the Republican impulse. But wherever you are, whoever you be, at 6 o'clock,

if you had the news on yesterday at 6 o'clock

when the BBC announced that they had just been informed

that King Charles had cancer, has cancer,

you will have been stopped in your tracks.

You will have called people in from the...

Don't at me to tell me that you didn't, all right?

This is what is called generalising. The me that you didn't, all right? This is what he's called generalising.

The fact that you didn't call your husband in from the kitchen

where he was slaving over a hot stove

because it had just been announced on the news that the King has cancer

doesn't undermine my generalisations.

It's the kind of story that stops the proverbial traffic. It makes you reflect on lots of things.

It made me reflect on the astonishing rehabilitation of reputation that King Charles has enjoyed since his late wife, Diana Princess of Wales, passed away when he was very much persona non grata and the

current queen was one of the least popular people in the country. You look at that extraordinary

exercise in media, I don't want to say manipulation, that feels a little unkind, but control, you don't have control.

What would you call? Media relations, there we go.

That astonishing exercise in media relations that has seen one of the most popular members of the royal family rendered persona non grata for the crime of falling in love with a woman of color and sticking up for himself,

while previously hugely unpopular members of the royal family have,

...