It was the Daily Mail’s Robert Hardman, I think, speaking on BBC Radio, who said the Queen’s death was a ‘Where were you?’ moment.
There haven’t been many ‘Where were you?’ moments in my life. Offhand I can think of only four - the assassination of Robert Kennedy (1968), the murder of John Lennon (1980), the death of Princess Diana (1997) and the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center (2001).
The scale of the horror of 9/11 sets it apart from the others but all four ‘events’ are united by the fact that they came as a huge shock and were tragic for those involved.
Given the Queen’s age and reports of her declining health this was neither a shock nor a tragedy. She lived a long, extraordinarily full life and died peacefully at home in a place she loved.
Hardman is nevertheless right. Her death was a ‘Where were you?’ moment.
I was in a Glasgow hotel room when the formal announcement was made on television but the impending news had been hinted at all afternoon so it merely confirmed what many of us already suspected.
I was in Glasgow because I was due to appear on a live current affairs programme, STV’s Scotland Tonight, at 8.30.
They wanted to discuss the Scottish Government’s ambition to be ‘smoke free’ by 2034 and although I could have done it from a studio in London or Cambridge I volunteered to go to Glasgow because I think it’s better if you’re in the same studio as the presenter and other guests.
(In addition my mother-in-law lives in Glasgow so I could visit her at the same time, and I could also spend the weekend in Dundee, where United were playing Hibs.)
News of the Queen’s deteriorating health was initially reported on the radio around midday, maybe later, while I was driving up.
At that point I’m not sure I took it too seriously, if I’m honest. How many times in recent months had we been told that the Queen had mobility issues, and only two days earlier she had been photographed, smiling broadly and shaking the hand of the new prime minister Liz Truss.
I arrived in Glasgow early afternoon by which time it was being reported that other members of the Royal Family were on their way to Balmoral, which didn’t sound good.
At four o’clock I had a pre-arranged telephone call with Rona Dougall, the Scotland Tonight presenter, to discuss the programme which in the absence of any further news about the Queen was still scheduled to go ahead as planned.
She told me though that the BBC’s presenters were already wearing black ties and if anything happened in the next few hours all scheduled programmes would be off as broadcasters switched to ‘automated’ mode (ie programming that had been planned and rehearsed years in advance).
When the announcement came, around 6.30, I was watching the news in my hotel room.
A few minutes later I got a call to say the scheduled Scotland Tonight programme had been cancelled, although they might return to the subject in a couple of weeks (when I will be abroad!).
On Friday morning I stuck to my plan and drove to Dundee for the match on Saturday. (It was too late anyway to cancel my hotel booking.)
Shortly after I arrived it was announced that all weekend football matches in England and Scotland had been postponed.
Although I understood the reasons I thought it was the wrong decision. As David Walsh, the Sunday Times’ chief sports writer, commented today, football was so afraid of doing the wrong thing it failed to do the right thing.
So there I was, in Dundee, with an unexpected day to fill.
To be continued …