COUCH ELECTION:A boat full of celebrities helped TV viewers stay awake during the election coverage, writes RÓISÍN INGLE
CLEVER thinking on the part of the Beeb. If it wasn’t for its posh election night party on a boat on the Thames, a boat stuffed to the rafters with random celebrities, we’d have faded far earlier.
They kept us up with the promise of Joan Collins and her astonishing eyebrows debating the “presidential” allure of David Cameron with Martin Amis and the man whose catchphrase was, “I don’t believe it” on TV. Not to mention Brucie! A golden-haired Bruce Forsyth was there chewing the fat with captain of the ship Andrew Neil. Nice to elect you, to elect you nice.
“Let’s go boating with Andrew,” a studio-bound David Dimbleby, spectacles askew, suggested every so often in between bouts of getting very cross indeed about the crowds that had been turned away from polling stations.
“It’s a disgrace,” he puffed sounding like a man who wished he was messing about on the river, “It’s like a third world country”.
As a viewer there was nothing for it but to start a drinking game where you had to swig wine every time a commentator on one of the channels described the election as “strange” or “unusual” or “confusing”. Pretty soon this game had to be abandoned because it was a work night and even Paxo seemed to be finding it all a bit odd.
“Mysterious,” muttered Dimbleby at about 2.15am and, with those images of Peter Robinson fighting back tears on losing his seat, we had to agree.
Back on the party boat. Is that Peter Snow? Yes! It’s Peter Snow and his handsome son. Surely Snow and Son should be back in the studio lording it over the swingometer instead of eating canapes on a boat while rubbing shoulders with (is it really him?) Gandhi, or Ben Kingsley anyway.
In the studio the swingometer was in full, er, swing. The graphics made Jeremy Vine appear trapped in one of those gravity defying wall-of-death motor bike shows. He was swaying, the swingometer was swinging, our heads were spinning, although that was probably the wine. Later, he pottered about in a virtual 10 Downing Street like a character in a cutting-edge children’s cartoon.
It was getting very late when a Miliband said that it was a case of “the people have spoken but we don’t know what they’ve said”.
By that stage, even with the promise of election analysis on the boat courtesy of your woman from Location, Location, Location, some of us were too tired to stay up and find out what they had said. "Do you understand what's going on tonight?" said Paxo to a panellist. If Paxo didn't know, there was little hope for the rest of us.