Here’s a gentle reminder to Channel 9 stars Peter Overton and Tracy Grimshaw of Lesson #105 of Outside Broadcast Commentary: Never babble on about things you can’t see properly. As you can see, it’s very high up in the syllabus.

We humbly offer this advice after the pair failed to recognise British Prime Minister Liz Truss as she arrived at Westminster Abbey on Monday for Queen Elizabeth’s funeral.

Here’s what we’re on about.

Grimshaw: Who’s this?

Overton: No… hard to identify … maybe … aah… minor royals … members of the … I can’t identify them at this point.

Grimshaw: You can’t spot everyone, unfortunately. They look like they could well be local dignitaries. It’s hard to see. We are often looking at the back of their heads most of the….

Overton: I think we are now getting to the pointy end, as they say, of the… was …I’m just told that was Liz Truss, the new Prime Minister hopping out of that car.

Now, look here! The MGH has built its reputation on the fact that it always takes a serious look at Australia’s mainstream media and seeks at all times to improve its standards in a fair and balanced manner. For those reasons alone, there’s no way we are going to join in the massive immediate social-media pile-on that arguably Australia’s two finest journalists copped over that exchange. Hundreds of tweets in particular were as funny as Overton and Grimshaw’s live contribution was but there’ll be no similar cheap shot from us!

Oh, who the fuck are trying to kid. What on earth were these two thinking?

We accept that arguably Australia’s two top broadcast scribes can’t be blamed for where British authorities placed them. Using Google maps and standard satellite triangulation methods and taking Grimshaw at her word that they were only seeing the backs of people’s heads from quite a distance, we’ve got the pair on the roof of the famous Hercules pub in Lambeth on the other side of the Thames, albeit armed with powerful binoculars.

We won’t even go into why they were placed there, given that Queen Elizabeth herself had stated on many occasions that Australia was her favoutite dominion and she loved its people more than any other members of the Commonwealth. Very shabby treatment then, one could argue, for arguably Australia’s two most famous journalists.

No, there’ll be no criticism from us, except perhaps to suggest that seeing they couldn’t see things at all well, and mindful of Lesson 105 of Outside Broadcast Commentary, why didn’t they simply commentate off the Channel 9 footage which we’re assuming was provided by the BBC? The nation broadcaster’s cameras were treated far less shabbily and had a much better view. They were everywhere!

It’s exactly that footage that showed Liz Truss in close-up for about eight long, painful, seconds before someone told Overton through his earpiece while he continued to squint through his binoculars who the little woman dressed in black and with the funny walk was!

It’s why the main BBC commentator covered the entire day’s proceedings quite brilliantly from what that broadcaster’s cameras were showing him. He wasn’t overhead in a helicopter. He wasn’t on the ancient ceiling of the Abbey.

And, oh, what a wonderful job he did, too, using measured, dulcet tones and wonderfully poignant pauses in the very language his nation invented to describe the Queen’s final journey through the city of her birth. No-one does English better than the English!

If Overton and Grimshaw had followed his lead, they might have been able to share his astute observation, all off a video screen, that Queen Elizabeth, despite by then being 10 days dead and enclosed in a very expensive coffin drapped in her colours, was somehow still able to get a final glimpse of her beloved Buckingham Palace and especially that balcony from which she had on countless occasions over seven decades waved to her loyal subjects!

You simply don’t get those amazing insights by arrogantly trying to rely on your extremely limited line of sight from across the river and an unwarranted self-belief in an ability to wing it to really nail the greatest live event of this or any other millennium, if not the entire time of humanity on this planet, what’s gone before and whatever time it has left.

In conclusion, Overton and Grimshaw fucked up, basically.