Pandemic puts the kibosh on election night drama

IF things were as they should have been, yesterday morning would have been a wipe-out. My teeth would have been furry, my brain foggy, and I would have tucked into a welldeserved and not that healthy breakfast. A bacon and sausage sandwich for example, possibly with white bread, definitely with brown sauce. If you think I sound like I should have been recovering from a long night out on the tiles, you’d be wrong. I should have been recovering from election night.

When people hear that you are a journalist they often ask what ‘is the best story’ you have ever been involved in. It’s a tough one to answer, because the times when news reporting is really electric are usually times of disaster, tragedy or war. I was ‘shifting’ in a national newspaper newsroom when the Dunblane massacre happened, can recall every moment of the day Princess Diana died, and the exact words of every single person who was around me when the first plane hit the Twin Towers. All of those news events were extraordinary things to be part of.

I covered Oasis’s legendary show at Maine Road, and interviewed Lemme (he of Motorhead fame) in the same room where a play rehearsal of Lady Windermere’s Fan was going on – both memorable.

But of all the news events I have enjoyed the most election nights have been the gifts that never stop giving.

I am not alone. Throughout my career reporters and sub-editors who for 99% of the time show no interest in politics whatsoever would volunteer for election night. Getting on the election night team was a badge of honour, and it came with one basic requirement: you had to pull an all-nighter.

Normal working patterns would be suspended for the election team, count-based staff would wear suits, and office based workers would – can you believe it – wear jeans! The nightshift would start at ten, the office telly would be on, and we all gathered round for the first exit poll reports.

The 10pm start was actually a complete waste of time as there was then really nothing to do until the results started coming in. So for three or four hours the election team would make contact with reporters in the field, and then sit back, watch the telly and talk largely nonsense.

We would have giant bags of sweets to get us through the night (hence the furry teeth) drink unnecessary amounts of coffee to keep us awake, and talk about what sort of brekkie we would get when the day shift took over. We would discuss who was going to go home straight to bed, and who was going to ‘work through’.

Competition and the intoxicating news environment normally meant everyone stayed on for the day shift. As the results began to trickle in things would get busier, and for a while we would obsess over what was happening in places like Jesmond or Hartlepool. When the results flooded in normally between 3am and 6am the rush to get the election special out began. It was organised chaos, very noisy and great fun.

Not so this year I’m afraid. Election night on Super Thursday was completely kiboshed by the pandemic, and there will still be counting on Monday in some of the police commissioner elections. There was no all-nighter – I was in bed before the election team would normally start. Super Thursday was not so super for me.