on the queue, and I'm impressed by the thousands ready to stand for 24 hours, but am I wrong to say that ALL "lying in state" events around the world, be they tyrants or heroes, celebrities or monarchs, lasts for hours and miles and days? It all depends on media coverage, like so much else. We are all, most of us, sheeple.

I call it the Leap Up And Down syndrome - in 1971 I sold hundreds of thousands of copies of a record that almost nobody liked by manipulating the media.

But let's bear in mind - whilst 99% of "lying in state" is honoured because of fame or media hyped celebrity, our beloved Queen is perhaps the first who I believe is because she personified being a great human being. It showed in her smile. It showed in her never putting a foot wrong. We have Popes and Stalin and Elvis and Mao but our Queen was a wonderful human. That is what I cherish.

Yes and no. There IS something slightly deeper than just ‘media manipulation’ at play here. I clearly recall receiving an early morning phone call from a friend 25 years ago, informing me of Princess Diana’s death a few hours earlier. Despite then having no particular feelings either way about her, Charles, the family or the scandals, I felt peculiarly compelled to do something I had never done before - to buy a bunch of flowers and take them to Kensington Palace. It was so early when I arrived (well before 9am) that my bunch was only about the 6th laid at the gate on that first day, which went on to see thousands and then millions placed there. What actually struck me as the days passed was the sort of silent collective conscience which seemed to empower people to go and do what they did. An almost invisible spiritual push. Yes, of course fanned by media coverage, but something more mysterious and primal was the greater motive.

I don't get it; maybe I am missing something. I have a friend who happily queued for 12 hours yesterday to walk past a coffin. This seems to me as good a definition of insanity as any; for monarchist or Republican