FUN WORLD

LONDON - The Royal Wedding looks certain to get the X-Factor treatment after it emerged that the stage manager of Britain's biggest TV show will be taking control of the 60 special cameras inside Westminster Abbey on the day.

Buckingham Palace has asked Diccon Ramsay, the 27-year-old stage manager of the U.K. version of Simon Cowell’s X-Factor, to take time off from his day job and bring some showbiz drama to coordinating coverage inside the Abbey, where a network of cameras that have been installed to deliver every aspect of the ceremony to an audience predicted to be 2 billion viewers worldwide.

Ramsay, whose TV credits included The National Lottery and The Price is Right before being selected by Cowell for the music competition, will signal the timing for Kate Middleton to begin her walk down the aisle and for the newly married couple to walk back down the aisle as the ceremony closes.

The cameras, which will relay every moment of the ceremony to viewers around the world as part of a single feed, will be in the vanguard of what is expected to be the most technically advanced broadcast of this generation.

They will be set up to show the attendant dignitaries, the arrivals, the procession, the first close-up of the bridal arrival and multiple angles of the ceremony including camera angles of the couple at the altar and taking their vows.

"This is the most nerve-wracking this we have done for years, because a global audience of up to two billion will be watching if we get it wrong," a production source told the Sun newspaper. "It's a one-off - nothing can be missed. If Kate wells up during the ceremony we need it in close-up and in high-definition. No wedding in history will have been covered by this."