Andrew Marr: London will see scenes 'unlike any capital has witnessed before' as mourners queue to pay respects to Queen
13 September 2022, 18:16 | Updated: 13 September 2022, 18:21
London will see scenes "unlike any capital has witnessed before" as mourners queue to pay their respects to the Queen, Andrew Marr has said.
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Opening Tonight with Andrew Marr, the presenter said it was unclear how the capital would deal with the sudden influx of visitors, with hundreds of thousands of people expected to arrive for the event.
"After the public mourning for the Queen in Scotland, her coffin returns to London where we are going to see scenes unlike any others capital has witnessed before," he said.
"At the moment, it doesn't look if the numbers work.
"The Queen will be lying in state for 109 hours in Westminster hall. Officials there believe around 3,000 people an hour can pass through if everything is going smoothly.
"Mathematically, therefore, around 327,000 can in theory pay their respects.
"So what happens if, as is reported anything between 600,000 and 1 million people descend on London and try to do this?
"Quite how the capital is going to cope with this is anyone's guess.
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'At the moment, it doesn't look as if the numbers work'
"Also quite extraordinarily, ministers assume that people will be queueing to file past the Queen's coffin at Westminster Abbey for 30 hours or more, inching their way slowly along the Southbank of the Thames.
"That's an act of devotion and sheer physical resilience hard to imagine and for many people, let's be honest, entirely impossible.
"The practical and physical problems involved don't really need to be spelled out by me do they?
"The fact that so many people are apparently likely to be willing to do this this is itself a tribute to the late Queen."
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Andrew continued: "Also today, the new monarch paid his first visit as King to Northern Ireland where the leader of Sinn Fein, which is of course a Republican organisation paid a warm tribute to Queen Elizabeth.
"I’ll be talking to the Archbishop of Armagh who helped conduct a service of remembrance there earlier on.
"Yes. It's a two-archbishop show today. Listening to LBC is officially good for your soul."
