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Obama's won it then, by 349 to 161 with a couple too close to call and Nebraska tied, I think. Ain't it nice the way they only actually count the votes if they can't guess who's won a state? Very enlightened way of doing things, I think.
I had intended to stay up and watch the whole thing, with McCain's home state of Arizona being too close to call until about half 4, which I thought was great. What stopped me staying with it, though, was the fact that I could only get BBC and ITV coverage of the thing, both of which ragged my pish.
I started watching it on ITV, who coverage was quite slick and well done - quite Amercian actually, as usual - but it annoyed me how simpering it was. It was pretty much "Countdown to Obama-rama '08", which is fair enough, but as far as I could make out the polls were looking a damn sight closer than to warrant that. So I flicked over to the Beeb for some unbiased reporting. It may as well have been a Top Gear Election Night Special.
I didn't so much mind that none of the VT seemed to work (which it didn't), or that this bewildered and annoyed the presenter David Dimbleby (which it did, greatly). What got me, predictably enough, was the tone the whole thing was presented in. The programme had the air of... I don't know, did you ever meet a distant older relative in a bar when you're both a bit smashed, like the mouthpiece uncle no-one's that fond of? You know that condescending look on their face that says "Aw diddums, look at the wee babby actin' all growed up", when they're falling about the shop at least as bad as you are?
It seemed the whole of the BBC's current affairs staff had been briefed specially to find a Republican and pick a fight. They even had John Bolton as one of the guests, which I thought was inspired, although after about an hour of baiting it became clear that the majority of the BBC's staff knew far less about American politics than they thought they did, or than they should have if they wanted to go arguing with a former UN ambassador and unabashed flaming bastard of a rag-hoisting American. I actually found myself siding with him. Sweet and gentle Jesus.
Between Rajesh Mirchandani's interview slash argument with a high-ranking Republican in Colorado, where he plainly didn't know his facts, Katty Kay's assertions that Mitt Romney would have been a far better running mate for McCain than Palin despite the fact that as far as I can see no-one in the Republican party even likes the man, and Simon Schama's quite interesting scrap with Bolton being stopped by Dimbleby to go to a video feed which turned out not to exist, I thought it was a great laugh. But if it had have been made in a basement by teenagers in their spare time, it still would've disappointed me a bit. Good thing I don't pay me TV licence then, isn't it? Maybe I will when I get round to buying an aerial. At the minute I'm using an Ibanez bootlace guitar lead, resting on the pin at the back of my TV, held in place by Goldeneye for the N64, and I've yet to have a problem with it. What an age we live in, eh?