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About seven or eight satellite trucks have been parked nearby.

“There are people everywhere. I don’t know what they are doing, but (they’re here) all the time, anytime — morning and night,” said Lea Fortunato, a researcher at Imperial College London’s Faculty of Medicine, next door to the hospital. The reporters, she said, are there when she arrives for work at 9:30 a.m. and there when she leaves at 6:30 p.m.

“They started camping last week. I didn’t think they would camp!” added Million Moyo, a deputy manager in the emergency ward of St. Mary’s. “Most people (at work) are really intrigued.”

Moyo, who has been working at the hospital for 13 years, ducked outside during his morning break to take photos of the media scrum on his smartphone. When Kate arrives, he predicted, his colleagues “will all be coming outside here to look.”

The scene inside the barricades keeping the media off the street indicated that the journalists may be getting a little bit stir crazy. Days ago, one camera operator at American network NBC set up a press-only betting pool where, for £5 a bid, reporters could make their best guesses as to whether the royal baby will be a boy or a girl, and the day and time it will arrive.

Still bored, he attached bright neon “for sale” tags to each of the ladders photographers had left behind overnight. “Post Partum Ladder Sale,” read one tag. “Will Swap for a Mars Bar,” read another.

Despite being obviously desperate for something to do during the waiting game, the creative mind behind the tags and the betting sweepstakes declined comment. Like his colleagues at the BBC, and the staff at the nearby cafe who have been responsible for keeping everyone from falling asleep, he’s been instructed not to give interviews. Perhaps media interviewing media is just too meta for the two big-dog broadcasters.