This was an inspired and truely British thing to do to form a queue to pay tribute to the late Queen. Currently it is a 10 mile queue that can take upto 24 hours to complete.
Queues as entertainment are not new as Legoland has been selling this for years (one visit had 7 rides each preceded by a one hour queue). This is however the first time we have had a televised queue with its own TV feed and incinsistently run twitter feed. At one point the queue was closed on twitter, but failed on two counts: they did not tell the people at the start of the queue, and when they did is it resulted in the formation of a second unofficial queue.
Self organising queue management is something inherent in the British character. Americans are amazed that post office queues work without anyone policing them. This is a single queue with several servers handling it. These form in many stores and self manage.
Developer Rants 