- guardian.co.uk, Thursday August 12 1999 17.18 BST
The end of the world will be something like this: no bang, no whimper, but a lot of TV presenters searching for the right thing to say to express totality - and on the whole not finding it. Armageddon planning should start immediately or it will be a media disaster.
Each channel approached the eclipse in its own style. BBC1 switched uncomfortably between the Radio 1 roadshow and an astronomer in an uneclipseable waistcoat explaining the event's deep significance for physics and why 250 astronomers had gone on a freebie to Alderney.
Michael Buerk, who was host from a studio looking across to St Michael's Mount, was not quite sure whether to be jokey or profound, and confused the benighted Patrick Moore (who had waited a lifetime for this foul day in Falmouth) by telling him to keep the rain off his monocle.
Poor Patrick, who should have been the star of the show but was eclipsed by the dense cloud, thought the event magical and mystical, but you did not need a telescope to see he was miserable. He will not be heading for Falmouth in 2090.
Channel 4, broadcast from a Cornish beach (lots of vox pops with people in windcheaters), had Queen guitarist (and physics graduate) Brian May to do the serious stuff, and at the moment of totality got the assorted anoraks to sing Saturday Night Fever. (When the world does end, it will be to a Bee Gees soundtrack.)
Sky were hopeless in Britain but cheered up later by tracking the eclipse across Europe. It looked marvellous in France, where thousands clustered round cathedrals and crosses, and Munich, where the main square was filled with camera-clicking revellers.
The BBC - heaven knows why - abandoned the eclipse once it had left British soil, emulating CNN which, because it was bypassing the US, almost completely ignored it, offering two minutes of half-hearted coverage from a reporter in Cornwall with a plant that failed to droop before heading back to the latest shootings. If the apocalypse fails to disrupt life in Normal, Illinois, don't look to the American stations for enlightenment.
The unexpected star of the celestial show was Russell Grant on Channel 5. As big as a megalith, he stood among the stone circles on Bodmin Moor talking to witches, warlocks and weirdos. Tears were shed, there was relief when the sun re-emerged, and Russell told us that it was not an end but a rebirth.
Light seeped back, birds returned to the sky, youngsters danced, witches cast spells, Philippa Forrester wept ("don't smear your make-up," Buerk chided), office workers came down from roofs, astronomers bored on about the corona, and Grant told us that the astrological auguries meant that henceforth we should be more positive.
Patrick Moore presumably got Pisces.
