Channel 4's Alternative Election Night

Jeremy Paxman: trading news for comedy in the election

The veteran journalist will be co-presenting Channel 4's alternative election coverage alongisde David Mitchell, Richard Osman and other entertainment figures.

Jeremy Paxman: when newsreaders do comedy

The journalist is venturing into comedy and, apparently, he's raring to go.

C4 hopes to build up on Alternative Election Night

Broadcaster in talks with producer Zeppotron to make late-night political satire programme.

Charlie Brooker: Political leaks on primetime

I got through my first weeny link without a hitch. But moments before doing my second link, much later in the night, something completely unexpected happened. I did a piss.

Channel 4's Alternative Election Night was good fun, if a little long. Still with only 3 results announced by midnight, it was better than all the endless, ill-informed, speculation going on over on BBC1 and ITV.

Gag of the night went to David Mitchell. "Does David Cameron actually find his wife attractive? Or, like everyone else, just feels he ought to?"

Predictably Jimmy Carr was rather less subtle, and came over all Ben Elton. "This is the most exciting election for 35 years. Margaret Thatcher can't remember a better election. Or the names of her children." Ouch!

The Thick Of It's Armando Iannucci revealed his abiding memory of the 1997 election. "I remember doing something not dissimilar to this - a live comedy show from this studio, went on for 3 hours," he recalled fondly. "My abiding memory of the entire election was sitting afterwards on a beer-sodden carpet next to Valerie Singleton watching Michael Portillo lose."

It began with an unprecedented third-party surge, with Channel 4 opening its campaign for the couch-potato vote 55 minutes before the two established parties - BBC and ITV - even got into the game. There would be, the announcer promised, "very strong language and adult humour", not something that had ever been delivered by the traditional coverage, and it was rapidly clear that the Alternative Election Night really did have fresh policies to offer.

They had Lauren Laverne and Charlie Brooker and David Mitchell and they had an anchor, Jimmy Carr, with a novel approach to clarification: take their beginner's guide to proportional representation, for example. "The easiest way to explain it," said the comedian drily, "is to someone who's interested and already understands it".

With the satire muzzled by broadcasting restrictions until polls closed, they filled the time with a special edition of Come Dine With Me - three politicians and a pundit competing in a hellish unpopularity contest. Derek Hatton cooked scallops with asparagus for Edwina Currie, Brian Paddick and Rod Liddle and the viewers watched aghast.

"They might as well have called that If You Only Had One Bullet", said Carr, not the last time in which he deployed a candour which would have been welcome on other channels. I'm not sure that anybody with a choice in the matter would have turned over at 9.55pm - for the fiesta of vacuity which fills the gap until the first significant result arrives.

Channel 4's alternative election night outs ITV

Most viewers tune into BBC1 election coverage but Channel 4's election night is a ratings success, attracting more viewers than ITV1.

As this week's QI repeat proved, David Mitchell is obviously one of the smartest and funniest men on TV at the moment, and is probably the inheritor of Stephen Fry's mantel. So what the hell was he doing on this? Charlie Brooker was great, of course, as was Mitchell, but Jimmy Carr filled time by making jokes about Gordon Brown's eye and Lauren Laverne was just using up valuable oxygen the whole time. Oh dear.