Well not really live. But expect this particular entry to be updated as the night goes on. It’ll be in reverse order.
11:40
“Haven’t you got a city to run? Well go away and do it. Goodbye!” Paxman to Boris.
11:36
I’ve just realised that I missed the news that my own local MP who had her expenses issues has been kicked out. It was still a close run thing though.
She can’t be surprised, and frankly, there’s no need for anyone who lives around here to have a second home in Westminster.
Meanwhile Boris is talking nonsense with Paxman which might make for light relief, but he is still our mayor for God’s sake.
11:26
David Steel correcting Jeremy Paxman on what Nick Clegg actually said – which does mean the Tories get first attempt at putting a Parliament together, and not that Nick Clegg will talk to the Tories first. Those are subtly different things.
Jeremy Vine in his CGI parliament which looks like it’s been created with the help of those guys in Taiwan who animate the news.
10:54
The more alert may have spotted a large seven hour gap between updates. That’s because I went to bed for a bit around 5am.
So the news now is that Nick Clegg has said that he thinks the Tories should get to be first chance to make a government. That doesn’t mean that he’ll support them however. But one way or another it’s a disappointing result for the Lib Dems.
03.54
OK – so I’ve slowed down these updates quite a bit. Still on Twitter though.
02:58
It seems as though Boss Hogg from the Dukes of Hazzard was standing in Witney where amazingly, David Cameron won the seat.
02:46
Paddy Ashdown was interesting on Five Live just now talking about the growing importance of postal votes and noting how the exit poll can’t take proper account of those voters.
Paxman asks Opik if he lost because of a Cheeky Girl!
02:26
Lembit Opik loses his seat. I don’t think this quite counts as 2010’s version of “Were you still up when Portillo lost his seat?”
02:06
Yes – I know that I’m not updating every couple of minutes now. But there’s little to add really. Jeremy Vine has a table now as well as his earlier staircase.
And a drunk woman who turns out to be a C4 property porn presenter was interviewed on the BBC boat.
01:34
So where are we now? Labour wants to work with the Lib Dems.
David Blunkett pretty much conceded defeat and then immediately rowed back.
Some BNP “Land is Power” lunatic in Gordon Brown’s constituency is wearing sunglasses and seems to be giving a Black Panther salute of some sort.
Gordon Brown’s acceptance speech seems to refer to the reports of people unable to vote.
01:08
“Is this the Ashdown money?” ask Paxman
“AshCROFT,” says Lord AshDOWN.
01:02
“Well there’s very little to see there…”
Dimbleby on Cameron arriving at his count after seeing some dull footage of nothing much happening.
00:54
Over on Sky, Adam Boulton gets his turn with the Electoral Commission’s Jenny Watson and opens his interview with, “Are you going to resign?”
00:48
The Dark Lord himself has moved on from the BBC and seems to be in Westminster now where he’s talking down the line to Adam Boulton on Sky. No love lost in that interview!
00:45
It turns out that Ian Paisley has a son, and he’s comfortably won his seat in North Antrim.
I am beginning to wonder if Fiona Bruce has had a little tipple.
Willing Margaret Hodge on in Barking.
00:28
“An Eton and Oxford educated white man. They said it wouldn’t happen in our lifetime!” – Andy Zaltzman on The Sun’s likening of Cameron with Obama on their front page yesterday.
00:25
Andy Zaltzman has joined Geoff Lloyd on their election night show. Obviously he still has a few political gags left after recent appearances on The Vote Now Show, The Bugle, 7 Day Sunday and even his sister’s podcast, Answer Me This!
00:15
Oh good. Back to Andrew Neil’s party – obviously the hot ticket of the evening. David Starkey, Martin Amis and Simon Shama. Oddly Amis didn’t use it as an opportunity to plug BBC2’s upcoming adaptation of Money.
And is that Joan Collins gurning at the camera in the background? Yes it is. And she has little to no idea what’s happening. Richard Wilson wants proportional representation and Tony Parsons doesn’t seem to be able to differentiate between Milibands. Finally Armando Ianucci must be wondering what the hell he’s doing there.
Collins is a strong believer in the family, something she thinks Labour has forgotten. She’s such a fervant believer that she has lots of family via her four different husbands.
00:00
Over on Sky, wherer they made a great deal of the fact their election night is in HD (despite the fact that the vast majority of counts will only be in SD), we’ve got pictures of Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, at the Barking count. Thank god I don’t have an HDTV.
The he talks to George Osborne in Tatton. He uses the same line with Adam Boulton that he did with David Dimbleby on BBC1 a few minutes earlier.
22:50
Fiona Bruce has now twice smirked when talking about Nigel Farage’s crash earlier. Well I suppose – given that nobody was too seriously hurt – it is a little bit funny.
Now the BBC is taking it a bit more seriously and we’re getting a hospital update with both Farage and pilot being stable.
The problems over people failing to be able to vote sounds more serious – particularly in places where they actually ran out of voting slips.
23:40
More stories floating around on Twitter about voters refusing to leave polling stations having not been able to vote. Well there were an awful lot of soaps on this evening meaning you couldn’t easily get out of the house before 9.00pm…
23:29
Swings in safe-seats really aren’t relevant are they? But nonetheless, with little else to look at, it’ll get analysed to within an inch of its life.
23:27
Another less-than-shocking result from the north-east. The BNP guy didn’t bother to hang around for the result.
23:19
Looking forward to Jeremy Vine taking over as the new presenter of Five’s Domino Day
I seem to have strayed onto an old episode of That’s Life on BBC1. Esther Rantzen is a Luton independent.
22:15
A quick swing through radio now.
Geoff Lloyd has started his election night party on Absolute Radio with some old calypso music because the song was about British elections.
On Five Live they seem to have someone called Mike Smith on. But not the ex-Radio 1 and Saturday morning kids TV Mike Smith. Basically they’re filling…
(On my muted TV set Emily Maitliss is showing her map of the UK with one small red dot in the top right hand corner.)
Radio 4 is doing a professional job, filling in a similar manner.
LBC is a bit more argumentative, although they’re all saying that Clegg “peaked too soon”.
Back on TV Andrew Neil has moved indoors and has one of his This Week chums, Michal Portillo (ah, memories. He talked to us as school kids once).
Mariella Frostrup is here not talking about books which makes a change. She does know Gordon Brown seemingly. And Ian Hislop is also there, honing a few lines for tomorrow morning’s recording Have I Got News perhaps. He’s a not-really-in-the-closet Lib Dem.
Now we’re getting into why the exit poll doesn’t do percentages but does seats.
David Baddiel’s not really made a great effort considering he knew he was going to be on TV (NB I’m sure he’ll be terrific on a certain set of podcasts coming soon).
Sadly the signal cut out before we could hear what Fearne Britton had to say.
23:02
Huw Edwards on Sky 972 aka BBC Wales explaining why there’ll not be a great deal going on for at least another hour yet.
22:57
DImbleby: “We’ll be reporting more than the party leaders and all that.”
22:52
No sign of Sunderland. Over on BBC Parliament, they’re broadcasting BBC Scotland’s election coverage. They’ll be in for a long night as many of their more rural constituencies will have polling stations far and wide.
On Fox News it’s Glen Beck. Moving on…
France 24 is running live coverage, but I think I’ll leave them to it.
Al Jazeera is just covering the news as usual. Not surprising given the financial markets today.
Finally we get Sunderland and there’s no surprise. And overall it tells us precisely nothing.
22:45
Over on Sky they’ve been talking to frustrated would-be voters in Sheffield who were turned away from their polling station because it was too busy and they couldn’t vote by the 10pm deadline.
Meanwhile on Sky they “know” that Labour will win 255 seats in their exit poll. That’s not actually how it works Sky. We don’t really know anything just at the moment.
Fraser Nelson has been “working with his iPhone” and can’t find any “blogger” who believes the exit poll. Of course they mightn’t, and I don’t really either. But then I know no more than anybody else.
Sunderland is being slower than the TV companies had hoped. They’ve yet to announce.
22:40
Alistair Campbell using the “we” word quite a lot on ITV.
22:35
Brucie thinks he’s on some new primetime gameshow. You could see him desperately trying to work one of his old Play Your Cards Right lines into his interview with Andrew Neil.
By the way, with Piers Morgan on the bank of The Thames somewhere, all it would take is a fast boat and a paintball gun. Just saying…
BBC reporting lines in Leeds at 9.30pm and hundreds turned away in Manchester unable to vote.
22:30
Andrew Neil is looking shifty on The Thames somewhere. He’s hearing from Piers “Moron” Morgan. So along with Simon Cowell in The Sun the other day, that just leaves Amanda Holden and we’ve got all the BGT judges.
22:25
A couple of great pieces on exit polls from the FT and the excellent Mark Blumethal on Pollster.com.
22:18
Kirsty Wark is most certain that Nick Clegg is watching BBC1. But she also reports things that others are saying on Twitter, that large crowds at some polling stations have been turned away due to inability to handle the numbers.
Pleased to see that Sith Lord himself is with Paxman.
22:15
Good news, according to ITV News’ Romilly Weeks, the Sunderland ballot box counters have been chosen because they’re “very good at counting” and “good with their fingers.”
22:12
Over on CNN, Richard Quest has been banished to Parliament Green where there’s not a lot going on. Quest isn’t appearing as a hologram.
22:10
Sky has Adam Boulton in HD which is probably an “H” more than I need. In Sunderland the pictures of the election workers rushing in the ballot boxes make it look like a Saturday teatime gameshow. But even Sky admits it’s like “It’s A Knockout”.

22:05
A good start with no sound from Michael Gove.
The BBC’s “big innovation” is an FHM-style projection on Big Ben. Interestingly, I was at a picnic with Gail Porter a couople of weeks ago (friend of a friend).
Harriet Harman makes a good point that a decent turnout seems to have led to queues in a few places. She wants to change the voting system.
22:00
Hmm. Exit Poll predicts a hung pariament, but Dimbleby is already giving it a certain degree of scepticism.
307 Tories
255 Labour
59 Lib Dems
29 Others
21:58
Paxo’s on the “naughty step” while Jeremy Vine is following his Yellow/Red/Blue Brick Road. Oh good. Andrew Neil will be interviewing Brucie. I really need to hear his views.
21:55
David Dimbleby tells us this is the most exciting election for a generation. I note that this is going out in HD – much like Sky’s coverage – except the BBC would probably admit that 99% of their OBs are in SD since tonight must be one of the most resource hungry for any broadcaster.
21:49
I’ve been watching C4’s alternative election. It’s been advertised a lot today, including a wraparound on the Evening Standard.
Seemingly its actually being shot in the next studio along from BBC1’s election coverage in Television Centre.
Anyway, it’s a bit hit and miss so far, with significantly more miss than hit. I didn’t bother with the Come Dine With Me special at all, on the basis that I can’t stand Come Dine With Me and will never watch it.