It was too cruel, in a way. In one corner, we had three parties and three ultimately very human leaders that were, had we but known it, destined for speedy morning meltdown. In the other, three of the sharpest brains on these islands – Jeremy Paxman, David Mitchell, Richard Osman – queueing up, armed only with quicksilver wit and five years of frustration against spin, blithering and obfuscation, in C4’s Alternative Election Night.
But, as the televisual night wore on, I found myself almost cringing in hindsight at, say, Paxo’s earlier (pre-midnight, post-exit poll) throwaway jibe about the Lib Dem parliamentary caucus being able to fit into a taxi. And at the splendid Ballot Monkeys, another C4 production written by the beautifully cynical Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin, which ran most of the week, and was screamingly funny. But, again utterly in hindsight, it was too cruel, had been too true: from Ben Miller’s inspired long dark teatimes of the soul on the Lib Dem bus, to Hugh Dennis’s cynical Tory with the gibberingly pitch-perfect bitterness over Boris, to the woeful faffing and mixed-message misery on the Milibus. And we rightly treasure these writers and performers, their urgent wit being seldom more necessary than in the coming years, though some of Paxo’s (scripted) jokes were sub-dire.
It’s just that… as the night unfurled, it became remembered-clear that necessary satire hits living breathing human beings, full of blood and sentiment and humour. (I’m excluding Osborne, obviously). Even the most partisan SNP chief must have felt a slight pang at Charlie Kennedy’s destruction, or Jim Murphy’s eloquence (“Don’t waste a new morning… ”); even Ed Balls extended sublime graciousness towards his bester. The BBC’s David Dimbleby, perhaps more than the anchors on any other channel, was early to acknowledge much of this, calling Murphy, for instance, “a model of courtesy and dignity”: this was Dimbers’s last ever full-on election night, hence possibly an inherent empathy towards the cyclical Nature of Things. As he called it a day at 7am, to be replaced by the scary Huw Edwards, who would manage to sound cheesily bored were he breaking news of the Pope landing on Mars, there were sweet smiles around the table and, I’m convinced, a smattering of muted applause from the knackered camera crews.
The BBC, overall, did rather well. Not just Dimbers but also an indefatigable Andy Marr, the winningly tricksy Andrew Neil, always on the verge of laughter at the sheer ridiculousness of life and/or himself; and Laura Kuenssberg, also very funny, not least when she instantly and gigglingly defined Nigel Farage’s clifftop resignation/rerun “yeah but no but yeah” announcement as his Vicky Pollard moment. But even Farage, after his minor C4 meltdown moment, managed to pack dignity into his morning farewell, as of course did Messrs Clegg and Miliband. As could be said of all three, with a certain serendipity because a certain Scottish play is involved, nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it.
Julie Etchingham, across on ITV, who had performed with such commanding panache in the first leaders’ interview, was sadly ill-served by thunderously confusing graphics which, from what I could make out, were predicting forthcoming Bloomsberg-index sales of frozen OJ or Peruvian nose-flutes. Across on BBC1, the ever faintly irritatingly Jeremy Vine only had to cope with a pretend tiled snake running up a dark street, and an ersatz House of Commons which, for all its artists’ sterling attempts to render individual MPs’ features as those of semi-sentient droids, insert joke of choice, never quite panned back far enough from Vine’s arm-waving to show you the bloody finishing line. There was also a tedious clock thing: but Laura, and ITV’s Julie, and Sky (simpler graphics, whew; nanosecond faster updates, who cares?), and Sophie Raworth had all earlier explained cleverly, and in words of one syllable, how the swing – 39% from Labour to SNP, in one unprecedented Glasgow moment – had knocked the socks off even that Portillo moment (17%). The perhaps over-rich Beeb only let itself down in deciding, presumably in a sleep-deprived producer’s understandable necessity to flee Huw’s monotone, to focus for a full two minutes on Nicola Sturgeon’s plane coming in to land at City airport. Did they have a… dirigible blimp-cam, set up solely for that long moment? Are we paying for that? (Yes).
As ever, the rewarding money shots, from all broadcasters, came courtesy not of tawdry silly-coffer budgets but from relatively cheap cameras on the ground. The moment when Ed cracked his first unscripted “Milifandom” joke, freed from the shackles of an American spinmeister and allowed to be, for possibly the first time since entering politics, a flawed and funny man, and the deserved shouts of applause during his tribute to the legions of weary footsloggers. The moment when, in the ICA, Mr Clegg’s so-timely defence of liberalism, and the apposite quote from Alex Cole-Hamilton, was moving many in the room to rough tears. Farage’s tears might well have been blown sideways on that Margate clifftop, but the palpable human delight as he said “huge weight lifted off my shoulders” should have been cheered by even the most tight-bottomed and Pecksniffian of Ukip-begrudgers. And the slow shots around the Cenotaph: the three leaders looking, finally, normal, becalmed, clever, sombre: goodness, you might almost dare think of them as once and future friends.
On election night 1997, I accompanied one T Blair on another flight south, from Sedgefield into that gilded dawn. Against some wise advice, I concluded my subsequent article with the words: “What a win. What a chance for change. But things can only get bitter.” Quite how bitter, quite how slowly savage the myriad knock-on effects of the levers pulled back then, only finally became unconscionably clear on this other Friday May morning, 18 years on. Television, and technology, have now moved on faster than at any time since the juncture between the Ark and self-service tills, ie both hugely, and not at all. But, for all I’m still smiling at the meme which portrays a yellow-blue map of new Britain as Maggie Simpson, it’s the same old story: new tech can blitz and whizz, but old-fashioned human politicking, down and dirty or musical and hopeful, will get you in the back of the knees every time.
WERE THEY ALL RIGHT ON THE NIGHT?
Julie Etchingham
Despite a visually strange desk set-up, and some strange IT work, she re-established herself as heir apparent to David Dimbleby, if not the once-sainted Paxo. On top of everything, dusk till dawn. But an exceedingly close runner-up was Laura Kuenssberg, a constant gift of fresh air.
Andrew Marr
The Duracell bunny of Friday. Health problems apparently discarded, he was by turns caustic, kind, funny, niggling and sagaciously jug-eared.
Peter Kellner
Lovely Peter, formerly of this parish, was somewhat blown about by the exit count, which retrospectively rendered all his YouGov polls as much use as a one-legged man in an arse-kicking contest. He politely took umbrage-by-proxy with the strange man-rabbit John Curtice, who was busy being proved almost entirely right. Near dawn, two-thirds through the counts, Peter came out with a honest and wistful “Ah. If only the polls could stay exactly like this”. He’d be a winningly more analytical presenter elsewhere in the year to replace, say, Nick Hewer and that nasty Margaret Mountford.
Nicholas Witchell
No, that was just our attempt at humour.
Richard Osman
Nailed C4’s election-night coverage with a now-trademark mix of wit, empathy, banter, decentness, learnedness, trivia and, occasionally, quite, quite unassailable rudeness.
