Were you still up for Edinburgh Central? Unless the result clashed with your afternoon nap (how dare you), the answer was probably yes.
For this was the election that made history by holding the count during the day. Out went the PJs and popcorn, and in came cereal and proper day clothes. There is something very, very wrong about wearing a bra while watching the election results.
It had already been a lacklustre campaign, and now it looked to be a downer of a count. To make things more miserable, STV was out of the picture, its journalists going on strike over pay and workloads, leaving BBC One Scotland to go it alone. It was like having a cup final where only one side turns up.
But as we know, the BBC is never knowingly undermanned. Some high heid yin had decided that the nation would also be covered by the network election programme, which meant Kirsty Wark at Holyrood and Clive Myrie at the Senedd in Cardiff.
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No one had told Clive he was the support act because he tried to get the first word in when London introduced the duo. Kirstles simply spoke louder and carried on talking until Clive gave in. Sorry Clive, not her first rodeo, mate.
The BBC’s Pacific Quay HQ in Glasgow had been kitted out for the occasion. It may have been daytime outside, but inside the lighting was low and moody, like a nightclub full of the world’s squarest patrons, or the set of Chicago.
The programme could have done with a few musical numbers to break up the tedium early on. Despite everyone knowing that the first results would not be in until lunchtime, the programme started at 9.30am. In another case of overmanning, hunners and hunners of guests had been booked, or so it seemed. There cannot have been a Scottish professor alive who had not been invited to contribute their tuppenceworth. Ditto former ministerial aides, polling experts, and campaigners.
It was so dull for so long, even the slightest thing was leapt upon, including the colour of Willie Rennie’s suit. Was it purple or aubergine or some other tint? Rennie settled it after panellist Jo Swinson (remember her) texted him live to say it was “plum”. In Kirkwall, the BBC chap was clearly hoping for the return of the cat who had to be ejected from the hall last time. Alas, he was a no-show.
Viewers had to wait till 4.05 pm for their “Portillo moment” - the ousting of SNP minister Angus Robertson by the Greens’ Lorna Slater in Edinburgh Central. To add insult to electoral injury, Robertson heard the result while standing between Slater and a campaigner dressed as a bird. Politics, don’t you just love it?
Star of the day? Geissler by a mile. He was like a kid with two Christmases, which is exactly the approach required. Bernard Ponsoby, mind, ran him a close second, followed by Willie Rennie’s suit, whatever colour the ruddy thing was.
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