Three examples come to mind.
A once- popular parody news-quiz show devoted most of its last episode to the alleged sexual behaviour of its compere, who had been caught in dealings with a prositiute. One of the panellists kept cutting in with little reminders about the potential for atomic war loomng on the other side of the world.
Yesterday afternoon, Channel 4 cut into its programming with an 'urgent news-flash', which after a few agonising seconds of distress in my house, turned out to be the resignation of non-entity Stephen Failtrack Byers.
Last friday, BBC Radio 5 was about to broadcast live coverage of the 'historic' signing in Moscow of the nuclear reduction treaty between Russia and the USA. Then suddenly, someone realised that the England World Cup team manager was giving a press conference at the same time, so guess which got the precedence ...

(=)The title of my article is taken from a rather odd book by Nevil Shute (1957) about how life would be conducted before and after a nuclear exchange. There would be no mass panic, just people going about their lives in the usual humdrum fashion, waiting for the inevitable rockets to land and the clouds to drift round the world. Often criticised for its 'commonwealth suburbanity', (being set largely in Australia) it seems to be the most accurate so far.
I'd also like to put in a mention for Goldings 'Lord of the Flies' at this point, for again i see a parallel. In the pouplar imagination ths work is merely about nasty little kids who degenerate into savages as soon as their starnded from 'civilisation'. In fact, they cme to be in their predicament recisely because of a Pacific nuclear war, which rather changes the tone of the book. I for one cant help obsrving the way children are being treated to the most harsh measures in schools nowadays, being branded criminals by the age of 5 or so. Perhaps Golding is speaking about here and now