Regular readers of this blog [2] know that I'm not the biggest of Barack Obama fans. But I do recognise that he is the world's biggest, most important and perhaps most interesting political figure.

Evidently, the bosses at the Beeb disagree. From the Metro [3]:

The BBC has downgraded Prince Harry, Barack Obama and Gordon Brown, meaning their deaths are no longer important enough to interrupt normal programmes.

Princess Anne, Princes Andrew and Edward and the Countess of Wessex have also been removed from the "death list" although their departures will still be treated as major breaking news events.

They are now in a category known as "other notables" that includes Muhammad Ali, Bob Dylan, Mikhail Gorbachev, the Pope, the Dalai Lama, Margaret Thatcher, Nelson Mandela, Tony Blair and Nick Clegg.

The new protocol has been drawn up by a group of senior BBC executives, including deputy director general Mark Byford. The details, seen by the Mail on Sunday, have been sent to all senior BBC news staff, editors, producers and reporters.

Category 1 consists of the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Charles and Prince William and remains unchanged. If they die there will be the immediate interruption of BBC1, BBC2 and the BBC News Channel, with an official announcement normally via a Buckingham Palace statement.

I get the downgrading of Anne, Andrew and Edward -- would even the Queen notice if they dropped dead? But Obama? Brown? Would people really care more about the (inevitable) death of the boorish and ancient Philip than they would about the sudden and shocking death of the leader of the free world?

Is Obama equal in importance only to Nick Clegg?? And does the hypothetical death of Wills affect our lives more than the hypothetical death of the British Prime Minister?

Madness. Sheer madness. And another arrow in the quiver (to borrow a phrase from the man sitting behind me) for those of us [4] who argue that the BBC has a conservative, establishment bias.