I sat up last night watching porn. Or rather, the feeling of self-disgust and shame I feel this morning makes me feel like I did. The memories of the actual contents of my nocturnal viewing are hazy, until now… The mist of memory is clearing… And disappointingly, I realise I stayed up all night watching the election results show.
Why do we bother with results shows? The electorate has spoken, the votes are being counted, nobody else can be influenced by the to-ings and fro-ings of party spokespeople, so why do we persist with the fan dance around expectations? For the titillation of the political twitterati? The possibility that Jeremy Vine might swap and give Emily Maitlis a turn on the bar charts?
When Dimbleby (for it was he) asks the question how do you think you did?, surely the clever politician (and honest for that matter) should simply respond I havent a bloody clue, lets find out!
Last night, political porn mostly comprised of the unedifying spectacle of Baroness Warsi being briefed by iPad and inexplicably, randomly quoting various newspapers and blaming former BNP candidates for the UKIPs meteoric rise, Simon Hughes reminding everyone it had been really bad last time and Sadiq Khan being nervously smug about every very positive gain for Labour in seats we had always known were on their way back to Labour was enough to make me need Sky News. Terrifyingly, Sadiq Khan was far and away the most human and honest of the three.
Incidentally, on the UKIP story, when was the last time you saw a meteor go upwards?
Hughes, Warsi and Khan sat in the studio unpicking the election story like threesome partners too shy to admit they were were disappointed by the whole sticky mess of their liaison, each profoundly uninterested in the individual votes, concentrating instead on the interventions of Jeremy Vine and flirting with the questions posed by Dimbleby, then, dignity duly shed, hoping to get home and shower the days events off.
And so, I come quickly to the conclusion that this form of political porn is of the video nasty type, loved by those who seek to see others hurt, degraded and besmirched. Its not for everyone.
