It started, mysteriously, at about 3am. Or, at least, so I hear – I was tucked up in bed. When I woke up last Thursday morning and checked into Twitter to find out whether I had time for breakfast and a cup of tea or whether I should head straight to the office because something else had happened in these times of political chaos, I was met by a stream of intriguing speculation about Buckingham Palace.
It must be something serious, I thought. The Queen had called a staff meeting in the middle of the night, according to a number of strangers whose tweets I'd never followed before but who I was now treating like authoritative voices because I was still half asleep.
Clearly, a lot of people were buzzing on caffeine and had spent half the night up speculating. There were the obvious theories: could the Queen or Prince Philip's health have taken a turn for the worse? Social media loves its doom-mongers, and there's nothing like a secret royal meeting in the middle of the night to set the rumours flying. Some were convinced it was bad news, and lots of people started praying, using the #GodSaveTheQueen hashtag.
Others were more upbeat. Maybe it was a pregnancy. The palace had released a new picture of Princess Charlotte only days before – so perhaps baby number three was on the way for William and Kate. Or maybe we should all be good little subjects and look out our hats in anticipation of a royal wedding; Prince Harry has yet to tie the knot.
Amid the frenzy, it was obvious that nobody had any idea what was going on. It wasn't even clear whether there had been a meeting at 3am, or whether the Queen had fired out an email at 3am, or whether there even was a meeting.
Robert Jobson, royal editor at the Evening Standard, tweeted: "Sorry I am not answering individual questions. Special meetings of Palace staff are not unprecedented. There was no meeting called for 3am."
Out of context, it looked as though someone in the know had finally arrived, a little irritated, to tell Twitter it had got itself in a tizzy over nothing. A closer look at everything else he'd said, however, confirmed that a meeting had been called and that it was unusual; it just didn’t happen at 3am.
By this point I wasn't sure whether I was enthralled or getting bored.
But before I could put my phone down, I found out that the ultimate howler had been committed by the Sun newspaper. It's not clear whether it was deliberate or someone accidentally hit the publish button (I suspect the latter), but the Sun, at 8.03am – two hours before Buckingham Palace had planned to release a statement – wrongly announced the death of Prince Philip.
Oh dear. One would not have been amused.
Growing annoyed that I couldn't get all the information I wanted from when I wanted, I opted to have breakfast at home instead of the office in a show of defiance. I tried to convince myself that I was above all this social media theorising while being simultaneously glued to my phone.
Then the big news came through. The statement we'd all been waiting for was finally ready after an emergency meeting called by the Queen, which may or may not have been unprecedented. News crews had assembled in their numbers outside of Buckingham Palace. It was time.
"Prince Philip to quit royal duties from this autumn, palace confirm," tweeted Jobson, to a collective social media sigh of: "Is this a wind-up?" You could almost hear the sound of coffee cups smashing against walls at the great anti-climax. No weddings, no babies, just Prince Philip putting his feet up.
It was a great PR stunt from the Palace, even if I'm still not sure what it achieved. But it certainly grabbed attention, global to some extent, and captivated overactive imaginations. It doesn't take much to send Twitter off into a frantic theory spree, and it's not easy to keep news so tightly controlled for so long in the way the Palace did.
As I sat in the office preparing to carry on with the rest of the working day as normal despite the mild distraction, I had a small chuckle at those who'd been daft enough to sit up all night (as if I'd never done it).
I might have been the editor waking up to the social media fun when it was all but over, but at least I got a decent, smug night's sleep.
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