The death of Prince Philip has produced some unexpected cultural fault lines in the responses.

On Thursday the BBC announced that it had received 109,741 complaints from members of the public about its coverage of the Duke of Edinburgh's death.

My own views may or may not be typical, but the broadcaster in me found it over the top to wipe everything else from the main two channels and to axe BBC4 completely.

This is not because of any antipathy to the Queen’s consort – clearly his death was a major news story in anyone’s language.

But, simultaneously, we had a lobbying scandal brewing at Westminster, Ulster once again engulfed in sectarian violence, Russia and Ukraine on the brink of war, election campaigning, and the ongoing coronavirus.

I’d argue that a balanced response would have been to cover these as normal on one of the mainstream channels available, whilst giving the Duke of Edinburgh’s life and times adequate prominence on the other.

There is too a fine line between proper deference and obsequiousness. Contemporary obituaries in the print media tend to give a rounded picture of the departed these days. Some of the contributors on the airwaves still seemed wedded to hagiography.

Yet I think what was mainly behind the record number of complaints was the fact that filling so many hours meant endless and unavoidable repetition.

It seems that Channel 4’s Gogglebox had a record audience last Friday evening, which indicates the level of desperation in some households!

Yet the other side of that coin is the 100-plus people who complained that there wasn’t enough black clothing covering the broadcasters; doubtless the same cohort who had barely concealed apoplexy when the luckless Peter Sissons announced the Queen Mum’s passing in a burgundy tie.

You might have thought this to be purely a generational divide, except that people like me are long past the age of automatic irreverence.

Keeping a sense of proportion, however, is an ageless aspiration. I’m not sure the BBC managed that.