The BBC does it’s best. On Monday April 8th they arranged for some of their best reporters to observe the eclipse that traversed North America. As soon as totality arrived in Ohio, they had Helena Humphrey on hand to ask the locals what they thought. When the light re-appeared she asked the nearest local, ‘Michelle’, what she made of it all. ‘It makes you think there must be a higher power’. Helena nodded approvingly. But Michelle continued, ‘I believe in Jesus Christ and this shows he can do it!’

In public broadcasting that’s an ‘oops’. They would call it ‘the perils of live interviews’ – I prefer to call it ‘the unpredictable delights’.  They switched to the Beeb’s science correspondent, Pallab Ghosh back in Britain, to give ‘context’. As if searching for the most obvious comment in the world, he came up with, ‘The eclipse is affecting people emotionally and spiritually’. Of course it’s emotional, Pallab, when your creator God blots out the sun with the moon right in front of your eyes!

The sun (and the eclipse) kept moving and prepared to leave the US altogether en route to Canada at the Niagara Falls, where the BBC’s Nada Tawfik was waiting. When the studio wanted her to say something about the totality, she had the same experience as Helena in Ohio – she couldn’t string a sentence together. Nada went one further – she giggled like a schoolgirl. Both of them had ‘got emotional’!

But Eclipse Day’s prize must go to Nomia Iqbal who was standing by in Dallas. In the breathless minutes following the darkened sun she found a young family revelling in at all. She asked Ben, the father, ‘What are you feeling now?’ As it turned out, he was feeling something nobody had mentioned yet: ‘You’ve heard of the fine-tuning of the universe…you can see it here!’ He was another ardent believer and one who had uncovered the enormity of it all. The odds of the sun and the moon being the same size in our sky is beyond calculation.

The boffins at www.astronomy.com tell us, ‘Believe it or not, it actually is just a coincidence.’ I don’t think so! You wouldn’t bet on a horse with those odds! The answer is staring us in the face: ‘The heavens declare the glory of God…their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.’ (Psalm 19). That explains the soundless noise during the broadcast – the heavens were shouting to the venerable broadcasting corporation. And to eavesdroppers like me.

Good old BBC. But they do try.