Transcript of the key planning meeting for the BBC’s Jubilee Pageant coverage

BBC Royal Pageant Director: I’ve had the details from the palace and it looks like it’s just going to be thousands of boats of all sorts processing past the Queen down the Thames.

BBC Royal Pageant Editor: Like military ships with guns and that?

No. Ordinary boats – everything from gondolas to pleasure boats to Dunkirk boats. The lot.

What’s a Dunkirk boat?

No idea.

God, that’s going to be boring. The audience’ll be switching off in droves.

They’ll probably be doing that in any case. No one’s got the heart to tell the poor old royals how irrelevant they are to today’s vibrant, multicultural Britain. William and Kate, well, okay, they’re young, good-looking, happening – but a dumpy little 86-year old German hausfrau and her 90-year old Nazi partner? I mean – what’s that all about?

And if it pisses down with rain, no one’ll bother to turn up, so we’ll end up with some Teutonic crumblies watching the occasional crappy old boat drift past in the middle of a deserted city.

Couldn’t we just ignore the event and concentrate on the big concert the next day? It’s got rappers and everything!

No – three-line whip from the DG.

(long silence)

I know! We’ll stuff the coverage full of every last celebrity on our books – Ferne Cotton, John Sergeant, Clare Balding, Maureen Lipman, Aneka Rice…

Steady on! There are limits…

No, it’ll work. We’ll stick Balding on a boat with lots of rowers and she can stomp up and down like the master on a slave ship. We’ll stick Aneka on the Millennium Bridge with… with…

Yeah! Artists, all, like, painting the boats and that, just like Cannelloni.

Brilliant! And because there won’t be many blacks or gays or cross-dressers around we could interview a gay, black cross-dresser.

Bring back Terry Wogan to do an ironic commentary.

Nah, he’s a Tory with an honorary knighthood. Won’t do it.

Dara O’Brian?

He’s doing the final of The Apprentice in the evening.

Okay, but surely there’s some way of getting left-wing comedians onto the show? The audience will be really upset if we don’t manage it somehow.

I’ve got it! Sandi Toksvi in a room with other comedians being really hilarious!

That’d be a first, but… okay, go for it!

And we can have cameras at St Thomas’s Hospital to show women who’ve just given birth to Jubilee babies. I mean, how relevant is that? With any luck, they won’t be white!

Racing certainty, mate. And we could have people cooking special jubilee food.

Can we get gardening and property and antiques in there somewhere?

Might be a bit of a stretch.

Ah well. We can spend the rest of the time in the studio with Sophie Raworth and Huw Edwards talking to personality historians and former BBC royal correspondents. Anything to liven up a dreary event.

We've forgotten Polly Toynbee. Shouldn't we have a fierce republican on to remind viewers what an expensive load of old rubbish it is?

Nah - she'll have been on every other BBC programme for days putting our - whoops! - I mean her point of view. 

Pity. Should we get in some experts who can talk about the boats – their history, their purpose, their meaning?

Boring! Remember, the aim is to keep the cameras away from the boats and the Royal Family (apart from Pippa Middleton – we really need a Pippa-bumcam) and concentrate on what matters: multicultural Londoners and BBC “celebrities”.

Sorted!