Back in 1987 — or rather early in the following year — Michael Cole was dismissed as the BBC’s Royal Correspondent after he revealed details of the Queen’s Christmas speech to a Sun journalist. He had revenge of a sort, I guess, when he went on to become spokesman for the ‘Phoney Pharaoh’ Mohamed Al-Fayed, peddling the anti-monarchist fantasies of his employer following the death of his son Dodie in the Paris car crash that also killed Princess Diana.

Now it would seem that Buckingham Palace is perfectly happy for details of Brenda’s musings to be made public in advance. How else to explain the fact that what she was to say became the subject of news stories early on Christmas Day?

This did not go down well with at least one reader of the Daily Telegraph. Ian Maule of the Isle of Man — home, I feel sure, to many Torygraph types — wrote to the editor to say: “I was annoyed that the theme and some content of the Queen’s Christmas broadcast was the first item on the BBC news bulletin at 7am. Speeches by the Queen should be reported after the event, not with a ‘the Queen will say’. Shame on the BBC anyway for spoiling the occasion.”

What Mr Maule did not point out was that the danger of this sort of advance reporting was perfectly illustrated by what happened over the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Christmas sermon at Canterbury Cathedral.

Some of what he was to say also featured on the BBC early morning news — I heard it. But, as it happened, the sermon was destined not to be delivered as the Most Reverend Justin Welby was taken ill with pneumonia.