Jim Shelley talks royal wedding coverage from BBC, ITV and Sky News

Jim Shelley talks royal wedding coverage from BBC, ITV and Sky News

It's a sign of just how 'unorthodox' the union between Prince Harry and Meghan Markle really is that none of the TV companies covering the royal wedding had any idea how to handle it.

If the BBC, ITV, and Sky were so disarmed by them, you thought, God knows how Buckingham Palace was going to cope.

Sky News' veteran reporter Colin Brazier summed it up by referring to the atmosphere on the streets of Windsor as 'a bit Last Night Of The Proms, a bit Ascot, and a bit Glastonbury - a really lovely vibe' but above all it was still a royal wedding.

Torn between treating it as a royal wedding or a celebrity occasion, they all failed to do either very well. 

The combination of the traditional with the contemporary defeated them.

Social media – or references to the way the event was being discussed or analysed on Twitter etc – was shockingly absent. 

Equally, the history of the protagonists hardly featured, with no look back at the footage of Harry and William's participation at their mother's funeral for example or at Harry's life growing up as a royal.

The elephant in the room (or the castle/chapel) was Meghan Markle's family. 

The myriad controversies during the build-up, such as her father's (non) attendance or stories about her half-sister and half-nephew etc, were dealt with by simply not mentioning them

Faced with an event that saw royalty, celebrity, various charities, and the public all coming together in almost equal measure, the BBC in particular hedged its bets and lost with a typically scattergun approach.

Far more at home with more formal state occasions narrated sombrely by Huw Edwards, it sidelined the newsreader to the roof of Windsor Castle's guards' room, bringing in Kirsty Young and, bizarrely, ITV's Dermot O'Leary (wearing the kind of suit he presents The X Factor in) to host the event instead.

Traditionally, the BBC would have experts on the Monarchy, fashion, and perhaps someone connected to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle sitting together to address the presenters' questions or comment on proceedings as they happened.

Perhaps that was considered too conventional on this occasion but it would have been more sensible.

After so much speculation earlier, the BBC's fashion expert had vanished when the A-stars arrived.

This really is the celebrity few minutes!' cheered Huw Edwards nonsensically.

'The Beckhams clearly having a fantastic time there,' he said, as Victoria looked characteristically miserable, while Kirsty was on her own and had to gamble on the designer dress Amol Clooney was wearing, guessing incorrectly sadly.

When the bride finally emerged, it fell to Huw Edwards and Hello magazine's royal expert to discuss her outfit rather than the fashion 'insider' with neither having any clue about the significance of Megan's veil or dress.

ITV was more comfortable with the more relaxed, celebrity side of proceedings.

'Victoria wanted to smile,' Phillip Schofield suggested mischievously after the Beckhams' entrance. 'But she thought 'I'll save it for afterwards.'

Its coverage of more formal matters left a lot to be desired though.

'As an actress used to the limelight can Meghan get away with being fashionably late?' one reporter asked eagerly.

'I suspect she'll be on time,' its expert on the Monarchy stated tartly.

The BBC had stolen a march on its rivals, starting earlier than ITV in order to gain such exclusives as footage of a tractor at Cliveden watering the driveway to stop it being too dusty.

The first hour was filled with a dizzying array of minor reporters telling each other how fabulous they looked, gushing how lucky they were to be there, and saying things like: 'so many questions ! They'll be answered very soon.'

The members of the various charities Harry and Meghan had invited were highly commendable obviously but their contributions less interesting thanks to the earnest nature of the questions.

'Prince Harry is a patron of your Rhino conservation charity. What does that mean?' an awestruck BBC reporter asked vacantly.

The entertainment value of asking the public where they had come from or what they were looking forward to was certainly over-rated by all channels, especially Sky.

'We have seen a lot of people from Canada,' one lady was asked. 'Why do you think that might be?'

'Well we are in the Commonwealth,' she pointed out patiently.

Over on Sky News, Kay Burley's performance on the big day was a nightmare, epitomised when she apologised to Megan ('if you're watching') for saying that she had only an hour left before she would be leaving – when it was actually two.

'You must have scared the life out of her!' her colleague said. 'She was probably just getting into her dress and having a bacon sandwich!'

Burley's enthusiasm for mingling with the public, as if she herself were royalty, was particularly inexplicable.

While the likes of James and Pippa Middleton arrived, Burley was