FOR the fifth conclave in a row, white smoke was sighted from the Sistine Chapel at the perfect moment to disrupt British evening drive bulletins — 5.07 p.m. UK time, to be precise. Over on Times Radio, John Pienaar was covering the same event when his producers got to the punch about 50 seconds earlier. TalkSport, whose five-o’clock news headlines led with the announcement of Maro Itoje as Lions’ tour captain, didn’t interrupt its soccer patter, but even it mentioned the white smoke in its scheduled 5.30-p.m. bulletin. In the UK’s most heavily Roman Catholic region, Richard Morgan, of BBC Radio Ulster’s Evening Extra had the bizarre experience of interrupting a report from VE Day 80 festivities on the staunchly Protestant Shankill Road to announce, “We’ve white smoke. Pienaar announced that Prevost was a moderate as well as an American; Tanner claimed that Trump would see this as a win.
