The poll came out... and a smirk spread across George’s face
SOMeWHeRe around 4.30am, the BBC’s David Dimbleby started to lose it. The veteran broadcaster had been sorely tested all night, with dodgy sound connections that made count officers and politicians sound as if they were blowing bubbles.
A fly kept circling the Dimbleby cranium like a buzzard scenting carrion, while Tiggerish Jeremy Vine bounced at his side, keen to show off another bit of virtual technical wizardry that would undoubtedly fail to be wizard.
Hosting the BBC’s election 2017, Dimbles wanted facts and he wanted them fast. ‘Can we show the forecast, can we show the forecast, can we show the forecast?’ he chanted, like a child denied a favourite cartoon. No we could not, and the grand old man of election night seemed to wilt a little more under the hot studio lights.
Jeremy was doing his best! earlier in the evening, he was on hand to fill the long, empty hours before the votes were counted. ‘Jeremy are you ready?’ cried Dimbleby. ‘Yup,’ came the answer, but he wasn’t. Not really. In the virtual House of Commons, something Jeremy called the Coalition Builder didn’t really work. Now there’s an omen for you. JV was supposed to control it via his iPad, but all the imaginary MPs ended up on the wrong side of the imaginary chamber.
‘Oh!’ said Jeremy, crushed. Fear not, he was soon inside an imaginary Big Ben, cranking up a hi-tech swingometer that had viewers scratching their heads.
Up in the balcony in the BBC studio, one side of pollster John Curtice’s remaining hair was self-crimping with sheer excitement. Was his exit poll accurate?
‘A majority of 30 or 40 is possible. eighty or 100 would mean we were seriously astray,’ he yelped. Tragically for the Tories, his first rock-solid figures held.
OVeR on ITV, Tom Bradby was hosting election Night: The Results, with special guests George Osborne and brisketfaced ed Balls. Here was the story and spectacle of the evening — the traitorous Osborne, high on hubris and revelling in the voting woes of the woman who dared to sack him last year.
When the exit poll came in, a smirk spread across George’s face like a hot poultice. He chewed his lip, he touched ed Balls’ wrist, you could practically see his cap of Caesar curls quivering with malicious joy.
The result was ‘completely catastrophic’ he said, looking about as distressed as a Cheshire cat who had just been fed a banquet of cream-based delights. He added that it was also ‘extremely disappointing’ (smirk) and the ‘revenge of the young’ (smirkity smirk). ed Balls, channelling his Strictly Come Dancing showbiz skills, wanted to know if Mrs May would be ‘tempted to cling on’.
‘I don’t think she thought she would be in the position. She looks tired,’ said Osborne, ever the loyal gent. ed thought that her ‘big mistake was to duck the [television] debate’ — a bit rich coming from someone who was last seen on television doing a Gangnam Style dance in a sequined blazer. Still, George and ed were a viewer’s dream team, the glib-tongued Ant and Dec of political punditry with contacts and hotlines straight to the top people.
Bringing up the rear was raffish ITN political editor Robert Peston, who wafted about — as usual — like a startled heron. Having two high-voltage politicians in the studio made Robert’s timid pensees seem superfluous to needs, but bonus points for the pink skinny tie on what was certainly the best programme of the evening.
As the night rolled on, Sky’s Kay Burley called the mood ‘pensive’, Andrew Marr on the BBC said things were ‘looking terrible for Theresa May’, while Auntie’s political editor Laura Kuenssberg (who didn’t seem to be missing the banished Nick Robinson very much) wondered how ‘all our major political parties got it so wrong’.
Should we even mention C4’s Alternative election Night caper, which found Jeremy Paxman presiding over the dinner party from hell. Guests included comedian David Mitchell, Ann Widdecombe, Alastair Campbell, remainer champion Gina Miller, and Richard Osman from Pointless — a name which sums up that particular venture.
Ann gave Gina a look that could have curdled curds when Gina boasted of her tactical voting campaign. David Mitchell’s anti-Conservative ranting got tedious after five minutes, as usual. Paxo is too dark to ever go light on the entertainment front. His idea of entertainment is to bellow like a foghorn and forget his cues.
‘Right,’ he boomed at one point. ‘I don’t know what we are going to do next.’
You said it, mate.