Kate Middleton is the biggest story in the world: Max Foster at TEDxUniversityofStAndrews 2013

here we go um congratulations on your 600 years um I I've got a bit of an anniversary this year as well 25 years in broadcasting as you say I've had I've been very lucky to cover some amazing Stories I've been you know I've been I anchored coverage on Wars and uh you know financial crisis all sorts of things and when I was approached about covering the royal wedding I have to say I was in two minds because those sorts of stories are they're easy to understand stand and to explain but I had an issue with the royal wedding I knew it was going to be big but I didn't necessarily know why as a journalist our job is to explain stories and to take information and give it back to you to make judgments but I found it difficult to explain why the Royal reading would be a big story um having said that it sort of niggled away at me and that in the end was why I wanted to do it because I wanted to find out why there was this big interest and it was quite good fun we got some good access so there's me wandering through buck and Palace uh drifting onto camera the palace won't like the fact that I was actually in that but here I in the Royal Muse uh reporting on the carriages all the preparations for The Royal Wedding uh it went a bit far when I ended up in Windsor Great Park chasing the Royal Florist around trying to work out what his color thing was going to be but that video was actually one of the most popular videos on our website and it just shows the frenzy around that particular event but for me there was one um moment really that uh I really remember and was remarkable and it's a bit of a bad shot but it was the night before um the wedding and this was the M Bucky and Palace behind me and it was just absolutely wild it was like a festival and people weren't drunk they weren't on drugs they were just having an amazing time and I went around this group with a microphone it was live shot uh there was a group from Seattle there was a group from Sydney there these were British and they were just having an amazing time and I had that gut feeling that you get when you get a really really big story recently you know when Margaret Thatcher died you get this gut feeling it's big you can't screw it up I felt like that on that occasion but what really sealed it for me was this moment the next day after the wedding and this is the Mal and this line of police walking very slowly down the mile a very civilized crowd walking slowly very excited but again I still had this question it was um why are a million people there are a million people there the police reckoned and record TV audience coming to see a couple they don't know appear on a balcony of a house uh that they've never been in and it niggled away at me still so one thing led to another and I was appointed Royal correspondent and it's been an amazing sort of uh period for me and is's no doubt in my mind that the Royals uh are the biggest story in the world I know it's a big claim not necessarily the most important but they are the biggest story in the world and I'm going to try to give you the evidence for that if there is a a repository of Global Information it's Google there's no better comparison so what I did earlier this week was put in uh Royal Wedding 20 2011 uh you get 127 Million results so how do you compare that to another event well for me the most comparable event is Obama's first inauguration it was a historic moment the first black president most important job in the world uh so I put in Obama inauguration 2009 and you get 14 Million results it's not necessarily scientific but there's something else you can you can go onto Google Trends it's called it's a measure of interest and it's just it basically rates the number of searches and so the the star of the wedding of course is always the bride uh Kate Middleton I put her in this is the graph from 200 uh nine so starts with your inauguration and this is basically a it's indexed it shows the level of searches but that first Peak is the engagement then you had the royal wedding and then that actually the big peak was when those holiday pictures came out last year I'll leave it at that um and then you compare her to the rest of the royal family the queen Charles William Harry and she's the blue line and the only one that really comes close to her is Harry actually I mean the queen is the Bigg you know she's one of the few you know icons of modern history and she's gonna she's you know she's going to go in the history books and the rest wouldn't be there without her but certainly in our era I'd argue that she's you know she is of more interest so you take Kate Middleton out I use the term Kate Middleton because it's the name that is inevitably used for her on Google it's very hard to sort of leave the name that made you famous um so I wanted to compare her to other modern icons uh the red line is braco Obama so that first bit is around the election the inauguration and then he falls flat Duchess is rising you see the Peaks there Nelson Mandela doesn't really register Pope Benedict doesn't really register um you know it's extraordinary really you have to go to the pop culture world to get anyone that's comparable and the biggest name in pop culture is a certain Justin Bieber um and he's obviously bigger but he's falling down a bit and she if you imagine all these other people their positions will disappear after time but Kate's story is just beginning I mean she's not a princess yet she's um not a queen yet her story is just starting and the rest of them they will fall away and if you look at all these Peaks basically stories bits of information that come out and we get so much information about the others we know so much about them we know about uh Obama's Politics the Pope's beliefs you know Justin Bieber we know everything about all that information it just tweets everything The Duchess we don't get much on so when there is a bit of information it's of more interest and that's a crucial thing about her she is I think the biggest star in the world but the person we know least about and later on I'll explain why I think that's quite important and what we can learn from it and finally last piece of evidence uh this is um it's called Google Zeitgeist and it's the big sort of project they have every year and it's it's a benchmark really of the searches over a year and it's very ant keenly anticipated when it comes out and the last one we've got is 2012 and she is the only living person in the global top 10 so I would argue that that makes her the biggest story in the world the other story is come and go you know Olympics isn't going to be there next year um iPad 3 certainly isn't going to be there next year um so the more interesting question for me that the the thing that I wanted to sort of investigate was why and I think it's the story is the key thing here it's a narrative she is living the fairy tale she's a a middle class country girl her mother was brought up in a council house she met her prince here in these hell grounds uh she went travel the world she's now going to um give birth to an heir to the throne it's a it's a fairy tale it's a story it's a classic story arc and the best way of engaging any audience is with a story and she's done that and there are some sort of tragic subplots in there as well you had the nurse at the hospital you got Diana in the background but that's the that she it's a very engaging story you can dip in and out of it so everyone knows her story and the capital of stories is La Hollywood and I went there after the wedding with them there this incredible moment a red carpet moment and you had the biggest stars in Hollywood and all the studio bosses all clamoring to meet them and you know in Hollywood if someone's trying to be your friends you know they're a bigger star than they are uh this was a scene inside the spa event you recognize a few of the faces but look at them they're literally clamoring to get their attention the Duke and Duchess in the foreground I mean there're sort of a level above celebrity but ever since the wedding I've always wanted to look out the other way and at the crowd and see who's interested and certainly in America it's invariably women and girls mothers and daughters actually and they all have one thing in common when you speak to them I always speak to the crowds and in the US this is a Barbie Princess and this isn't Kate Middleton this isn't the Duchess of Cambridge but physically she sort of couldn't be living up to their expectations of a princess anymore and you know this is the country where anything can be achieved dreams can come true but actually you can't become a princess unless you marry Prince uh there in lies the attraction of Harry in the US um and I think there's a sort of frustration and when they do meet them they cannot get over the fact that um they are nice normal people and they are you know they they're lovely Ordinary People but there's this sense that how can they be that these mystical figures um in Canada we were on this tour as well we went there it's more sort of a respectable sort of adoration because it's you know it's the Canadian royal family as well and in Quebec was really interesting it's very anti-monarchy but Kon William always rate very highly in the poles so he sort of rise above the institution of monarchy in a way uh it was the same sort of thing in Jamaica as well I went there with Harry you know a republican movement but actually fascination with Kon William um I went to the Solomon Islands with them at the end of last year and this is the view that they would have had so I was with Kon William and this is sort F camera going the other direction as far as the I can see and it's it's a poor country and this was a cathedral and it had a corrugated iron roof and no sides and for them you know you speak to these people it's there you know they're interested in the glamour they're attracted by the whole story but it's a it's a it's a story of aspiration as well they would dearly love to visit the UK one day so it's about them it's their connection and I think in Britain it's deeply ingrained in us there's people from all over the world here but um we grow up learning about kings and queens and we sort of know their family Tre better than ours possibly we feel like we know their family it sort of feels like our family feels like we know them and they're always there at those sort of big National events as well we start associating the feelings of those events with them I mean there was the most remarkable Olympics last year and it was an amazing story for Britain completely euphoric and Kate William and Harry were there all the way through they even um expressed it for us this picture was everywhere at the time and you start you know that Euphoria you start associating with them and I think they are some sort of societal glue they represent us in some sort of way and we needed you know the wedding we needed the Olympics we've been let down in recent years and you know you know if you think about the amount of scandals we had in politics in Rel you know in the churches and you know in the media we've been let down by institutions and I think actually they live up to everything expected of a prince and princess and if you want to follow this story you you can you can follow every single update I mean I was in naum last year there's me behind them this is what they face and when people are talking to them they are filming it they are you know within moments that's out there in The Ether being discussed dissected everything about them if you want to follow their everyday lives you can I mean in my day you have to wait a week for the magazine nowadays you can follow every single moment this is a scene from further back and you know they're under more media scrutiny than anyone else has been ever she's the biggest star in the world she's under more media scrutiny than anyone has ever been in history just to you know really Express the point um we've lost the picture but I was in um the Solomon Islands in the cabinet and they were going around meeting the cabinet ministers and as they were doing so they had their iPhones recording the conversation I mean another perspective on this incredible story so you get this constant narrative and you start feeling like you know them but this is my point you don't know this person she's she's very very professional she makes what she does look easy I know some people think she has an easy job it's very hard to look that natural when you are you know you got a bank of cameras in front of you she doesn't give any information away she's very private person we don't know I've met her lots of times I don't know what her dreams are her sort of politics I don't know what frightens her other stars we do know about that and I think actually what we've done is almost fictionalize her and I think because there's nothing to contradict what we think of her we start I if you imagine a story as a narrative you need to know the protagonist to make the story work when you don't have the information about her character I think we've actually sort of filled the void with our own values so if you present this picture to people I did this few to a few people at work everyone says different things some people say nice smile clothes you know nice character privileged uh not interested but actually what I think what she's doing she doesn't give anything away about herself but she's actually telling something about ourselves so if you look at that and you your automatic reaction I think it says something about your values and it depends on where you're from how you grown up how you grew up sort of how you parent I don't know all sorts of things but going around the world I think it depends but I think effectively why she's so she is interesting and she's interesting because she tells us something about you thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 3,310

Keywords: ted x, Duchess Of Cambridge (Noble Person) Max Foster, ted, tedx talk, ted talks, ted talk, tedx, tedx talks, TEDx Catherine

Id: nl-AgHFmF3U

Length: 13min 57sec (837 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 04 2013