For the first time since 1997 I stayed up all night to watch the election coverage. Back then I was stuck in Stirling - surrounded by chippy Scottish journalists and covered in blue ink from an exploding biro - helping the BBC cover the Tory Party’s annihilation north of the border. God, that was depressing!
Last night wasn’t much better. There is nothing as deflating as discovering that the exit poll was spot on: it’s like being told who the killer is just as you’ve started reading an Agatha Christie.
Still, it gave me a lot of time to study the form of the three main parties - i.e. the BBC, Sky and ITV - as the plot unfolded.
The BBC did okay. I had thought Dimbleby’s crusty old clubman persona might have proved as embarrassingly anachronistic as it did during the BBC’s US election night coverage – but here, on a very confusing night, politically, it worked well enough. When it transpired that hundreds of voters had been locked out of polling stations at the end of the evening, Dimbleby’s outrage was pleasing: “This is disgraceful!” he thundered, as if some bounder had broken wind in the presence of royalty. He generally took his time, often peering silently for several seconds into the camera lens before speaking, as if it at some minion had distracted him from weightier matters. When poor old Rory Cellan-Jones came on to discuss twitter and tweets and blogs, Dimbleby treated him with the sort of kindly disdain he no doubt employs when a grandchild tries to explain the rules of the latest silly computer game.
The treatment of declarations seemed arbitrary. Sometimes, Dimbleby spoiled them by giving us the results just as the returning officer started speaking: at other times we lurched to a fresh count and listened to the results without being which party currently held the seat, or whether it was a Tory or LidDem target. Irritating.
Paxman is like some Kabubi theatre actor, his face twisting exaggeratedly from one stock expression to another: outrage, contempt, perplexity, amusement. The whole interviewing process seems to bore him these days. He isn’t really trying to skewer guests with penetrating questions so much as sleepwalking through his normal act, like some 1970s’ pop star grinding through his hits on the Northern cabaret circuit. Last night, he seemed to hold everyone he spoke to personally responsible for the likelihood of a hung parliament, loudly demanding what they intended doing about it. For some odd reason, he kept being shot from below,with a metal bar halving the screen, as if he was perched on a balcony, questioning someone on the next balcony.
Meanwhile, Andrew Neil – the neckless one with rusting hair – was stuck on a boat conducting fabulously fatuous interviews with selections of “celebrities”. Bruce Forsyth? Joan Collins? Was that really Martin Amis, or just someone who looked like him? What the point of this nonsense was, God alone knows. Maybe they’re the sort of people Andy hangs out with at those tawdry night-clubs he is reputed to frequent. Given that the squat Scot has had an excellent campaign – who will ever forget his clinical evisceration of Vince Cable? – this was a waste: he would have done a much better job of conducting proper political interviews than Widow Paxman, the corporation’s pantomime dame.
Graphics are a two-edged sword: if they don’t help you tell a story, they rapidly induce hilarity. Emily Maitlis did a pretty good job with Peter Kellner trying to extract trends from data which simply refused to yield them. She’s smart, and kept Kellner to the point, and the stand-alone video wall she was using did seem to represent the latest large-scale touch-screen technology (as if you care!).
By contrast, Jeremy Vine (a very nice chap, by the way) put in a performance every bit as bizarre as his appalling gunslinger a few years’ back. He had a huge virtual reality curved wall representing all of the seats being contested, which was supposed to demonstrate the balance of power shifting between parties. Unfortunately, the shift was so erratic, this key graphic was practically redundant from the start. It didn’t help that Vine prowled about in front of it in a half-crouch, making exaggerated arm movements: he was distinctly reminiscent of Charles Laughton in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, or, when he became conspiratorial, Laurence Olivier in Richard III. His movements were so distracting, he could have been declaiming “Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of York,” and we wouldn’t have noticed.
I turned over to ITV a few times. As with their coverage of the first leaders’ debate, their production design – in fact, their whole approach – was decidedly dreary, but a relief after the BBC’s eccentricities. Their graphics were even more incomprehensible than the BBC’s, employing a bizarre “pouring” metaphor which must have bemused an exhausted audience.
Sky looked the most sensible, and Adam Boulton again proved that he is the best political front-man in the business. His broad, well-fed face can make him appear amiable, but annoy him and you don’t half get a tongue-lashing (remember when he forgot all the leaders’ debate rules and ordered Nick Clegg to stop repeating his answers?). Last night, I particularly enjoyed him doffing up that symbol of New Labour silliness, Harriet Harman, when she tried to deflect questions about what Gordon Brown should do now by thanking Labour Party supporters for all their hard work. “I think the country would really like you to address the issue of what the government should do now rather thanking Labour helpers for the third time,” he snarled. Good man, Boulton, and when (if) Dimbleby decides to hang up his ear-piece, the BBC should send for Boulton to form an administration/take over as their big political beast - but I doubt he’d swallow the pay-cut. (The BBC’s Jon Sopel had an excellent election campaign and was good last night, and would do a good job as the main anchor, I’m sure, but he lacks boittom: he might be a good inquisitorial replacement for Paxo – he’s a lot sharper politically and can ask impertinent questions without raising hackles or seeming to bully guests.)
There seemed to be fewer dreary candidate speeches than during previous elections (“I’d like to thank all the little people who made such a hash of tonight’s count, the police, my agent, my wife, my rent-boy, the sad losers who run around getting out the vote because they don’t have a social life, my tax accountant…”). There was slightly less guff being talked generally – maybe because, for much of the night, this was a genuine cliff-hanger, and the broadcaster’s various silly gimmicks simply weren’t needed: for once, the story itself was compelling enough.
I have a horrible suspicion we may have to go through this all again quite soon – but not until the LibDems find some money to pay for another campaign: oddly, their lack of funds, and their poor showing, is currently the country’s main guarantee of stable government.
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