Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, and Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, during the annual Trooping the Colour ceremony at Buckingham Palace on June 15.
Credit: Getty Images
Days of camping, weeks of tweeting, months of speculative articles and still no royal baby. Kate Middleton’s supposed July 13 due date has come and gone, and Britain is beginning to get restless.
Royal author Phil Dampier said of the frenzy, “I’ve never known anything like it in my 28 years reporting on the royals.”
Meanwhile, Ingrid Seward, editor of Majesty magazine and royal biographer, compared it to the relative calm of Will’s birth.
“When Di went into hospital the photographers set up their ladders, there were around 200 of them,” she remembers. “But that was only when she went into hospital – some of these photographers have been camped out since July 1!”
Dismissing that due date rumour as “ridiculous,” Seward thinks that the lack of information coming from the palace has called everyone to panic stations. It’s a suitably literal interpretation of the dedicated media crowd surrounding St. Mary’s hospital — reporters and photographers have been waiting so long, they’ve practically moved in.
But while the press is still hanging onto the story, it looks like the British public is beginning to lose interest. A false start blasted through the Twittersphere last Thursday, with writers like Caitlin Moran musing: “Baby’s going to be born on Lil’ Kim’s birthday.”
It seems to have been one rumor too many, as the mystery shrouding the future heir has become too much for Londoners.
Sandra Washington, a 23-year-old working in HR remarked, “It’s just so dramatic – come out with it already. Blue Ivy made a quicker appearance.”
And Joe Jones, a 22-year-old student, was similarly dismissive: “I think people are getting excited over nothing – it’s just another baby.”
It looks like this isn’t just the view of the younger generation, as 57-year-old Gary Smith, a dentist, commented, “I think it’s great everyone is so interested, but I really don’t care.”
Given the media circus that has surrounded the royal baby from the beginning, including gifts of knitted kangaroos and a deluge of dead-end tidbits from unnamed and arguably non-existent “sources,” it is perhaps not so surprising that Britain’s enthusiasm is beginning to flag.
The wait continues.
