We are 40. (We are actually 41 if you count podcast number 37a.) The Collings & Herrin Podcast will soon be as old as me and it's already as old as Richard. In it, we say hello to all our female listeners, by name, individually, because we can; we also discuss foreplay in the Czech Republic; the loss of the old-fashioned, star-studded Woolworth's adverts; Frank Carson's opaque views on the Israeli occupation of Palestine; 118 118's racist joke service and the Deep House mix of me talking about Lion Man. We recorded it at the end of the afternoon, rather than first thing in the morning, so it has an entirely different timbre. More hysterical, oddly. I blame the half a cookie.

Help! Help! I'm getting mixed signals! I'm confused! My hero - and close personal friend since meeting her at the CNN Election Party - Shami Chakrabarti is backing my nemesis Jon Gaunt, using her status as director of Liberty to demand his reinstatement at TalkSport, despite his use of the word "Nazi". I thought I was a woolly liberal, but Shami makes me look like an occasional Daily Mail book reviewer.

This is from Liberty's press release:

• Sacked "shock jock" Jon Gaunt today welcomed the support of human rights group Liberty in his legal battle against TalkSport
• Gaunt is bringing the legal challenge after his contract as a freelance presenter with the station was terminated on 19 November, two weeks after he called a Redbridge Council representative a "Nazi", a "Health Nazi" and an "ignorant pig" during an on-air discussion about the Council's ban on placing vulnerable children with foster parents who smoke. Gaunt admits his emotions ran high during the interview because as a child he spent two months in care following the sudden death of his mother.
• Chakrabarti said, "As someone who has been on the receiving end of Jon Gaunt's blunt polemic in print and on the radio, I believe that the airwaves of a great democracy would be the poorer for his absence. I urge you to reinstate Mr Gaunt's programme without delay and have offered him support in the unlikely and unfortunate event that recourse to the Human Rights Act proves necessary."

She wrote a letter to TalkSport on 24 November 2008, describing the reasons given for Gaunt's dismissal as "bizarre and disproportionate" for a man "no doubt contracted to excite political debate." Which is a fair point, and tallies with what I have said: I never thought it was a sacking offence - surely Gaunty is just doing his opinionated, unbalanced, spittle-flecked, loudmouthed job. I don't like his broadcasting style, but then I would never listen to TalkSport. I hope he gets reinstated, as that way I would never hear him unless I took a black cab.

I don't think it's very clever or becoming or dignified to call a councillor names on-air when the careful logic of your argument fails to convince him, but equally, I don't actually think we should be frightened to use the word "Nazi". It is, after all, a valid word, not a term of abuse. I grew up with Rik Mayall calling people a "fascist", and if anything, it helped educate me. I'm more bothered by the crowd-pleasing, kneejerk laziness of the term "health Nazi" - and laziness is not a sackable offence. The whole concept of a "health Nazi" is deeply flawed. It's like the suffix "on acid": utterly meaningless unless you really mean that the thing you are describing is like another thing except after the effects of a hallucinogenic substance which you probably haven't even taken. A "health Nazi" must be someone who uses the tactics of the Nazis to promote health - try as you might, you will not be able to see this comparison through, even if you replace the word "health" with "racial purity" or "anti-Semitism". But it doesn't pay for someone like Jon Gaunt to think twice. It would unravel everything he does.

He lives in a black and white world. Or at least, he did.

I do believe in free speech, even the free speech of idiots. But surely he doesn't deserve the endorsement of my hero Shami Chakrabarti. She's too good for him, and must have more pressing cases of human rights to fight than a man who called her "the most dangerous woman in Britain" in his column. Why? Because she believes in liberty, and he believes in making "evil" people do "the Saddam shuffle", which is his funny joke phrase for "hanging," a practice we stopped in this country in 1965.

Maybe she is the messiah. Maybe Gaunt will repent. Maybe I should stop worrying about it.

All hail, Nathan Jay, who has made a disco record out of me talking about Lion Man on the podcast and posted it on YouTube. Anyone who didn't hear this anecdote earlier in the year may be baffled, but it's just me telling Richard about a man I saw on a train, which actually stunned Richard into silence. Nice work, Nathan. I am flattered to hear my Laurence Olivier-style voice set to a lazy summer beat. The animation is eerily accurate too, which I put down to my evocative descriptive powers.

I continue to spend my days at the British Library. I hope they don't mind, but I now think of it as my office. I love it here. It's like being an exile on an island of literacy and good manners. Except the tweedy, hushed, respectful exterior masks crime and seediness. Today we made the news. Oh yes we did. This big, boring old library full of books and old men and students and laptops! A press release was left on every desk in the reading rooms, to keep us all in the loop. It said:

Mr Farhad Hakimzadeh, a former British Library Reader, is due to appear at Wood Green Court today (Friday 21 November). Hakimzadeh has pleaded guilty to ten counts of theft from the Library, and asked for further charges to be taken into account. He has also admitted theft from the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Sentencing in this case is expected later today and you may have seen coverage of the case in this morning's press.

I might have flicked past this story in the past, but not now that I am a British Library Reader! (I always think of the Bill Hicks line: "Looks like we got ourselves a reader!") Mr Hakimzadeh "used considerable skill, deceit and determination" to remove pages, plates (not that kind) and maps from collection items. We're not just talking pages from a Dan Brown novel, these were mainly 16th, 17th and 18th century books on West European engagement with Mesopotamia, Persia and the Mughal empire. With the precision of a surgeon, he scalpeled the pages out very close to the spine, so that their absence was undetectable to the naked eye.

The CEO of the library said, "We are committed to making our collections available in the interests of scholarship and research, and to do this an element of trust is necessary. Hakimzadeh fundamentally betrayed this trust." Fucker. The library's press release is suitably sober. The Guardian went big on the story and made much of the fact that the dirty, rotten scoundrel was a "Harvard-educated businessman, publisher and intellectual." Apparently, he defaced 150 books, and caused 400 grand's worth of damage - which is in itself an imperfect figure as many of the books are literally irreplaceable, and are thus beyond costing up. Police raided his home in Knightsbridge and found some of the pages just stuck inside books he already owned. He wasn't flogging them on the black market, he just seems to have wanted them.

Having come in and out of the reading rooms like I own them for a few weeks now, I am at a loss as to how the evil "tome raider" (not my joke) managed it. I myself came up against security this very Wednesday. There are strict rules about what you may and may not bring in: no bags, no coats, no umbrellas, no food, no flasks, no chewing gum, no cameras, no sharp implements, no pens or highlighters ... it looks like it would be nigh-on impossible to get entire pages or plates (not that kind) or maps out of here. You have to carry your laptop and admissable items in a supplied, transparent British Library plastic bag. On Wednesday, I had planned to post my Dad's birthday card in King's Cross on my way to the office. I couldn't see a post box so I asked in the Library. The man told me there was a post box in the basement. I took my card there and saw that the only collection was at 5pm, so I decided instead to keep the card with me and post it somewhere with an earlier collection at lunchtime. I popped it in my supplied, transparent plastic bag and went into the reading room.

On my way out for a screen-break, I took the card with me, intending to take it to my locker and put it in my other bag. However, the security guard stopped me as I attempted to gaily skip past him. He asked to look at the envelope. I told him it was a birthday card for my dad. He told me that it was "policy" to open any sealed envelope being taken out of the reading rooms. (I understand why - I could have been sending folded-up pages or plates or maps to my dad - the perfect crime.) I groaned audibly, and felt really stupid for taking it in there without thinking. He sort of shook and felt the envelope, and said, "In this instance I am going to use my discretion and not open it." This was very decent of him. I took my card and left, feeling all hot and guilty, even though I hadn't done anything wrong. I am not very good at breaking rules. It doesn't really suit me.

Anyway, that's the kind of excitement you get up here in the British Library. What a life I lead.

Special Needs Pets (last night, Channel 4) was a tough one for me. My heart breaks every time I see a pigeon with a bad foot. I almost seize up with admiration when I see a guide dog at work. The sight of a dead fox, or rabbit, or squirrel, or bird, by the side of the road, is enough to haunt me for the rest of the journey, as I imagine its last seconds of unfettered happiness before coming up against the impatience of humankind. Why would I willingly subject myself to an hour-long documentary about pets with disabilities?

Well, I'm glad I did, as it was as much about the selflessness of certain animal lovers ("pet owners" does not really cover it) as it was about the resilience of animals. It being Channel 4, I feared two things: the freakshow approach that seems to bedevil even their worthwhile medical documentaries, and the sniggering presentation style that, again, infects even programmes with something sensible or sociological to say. Fortunately, Lawrence Turnbull, who made the film, swerved both pitfalls. He did not come to mock the - ha ha - rabbit in a wheelchair, or the - tee hee - Jack Russell who kept falling over, or - guffaw! - the parrot with sexual problems. Nor did he seek to make laughing stocks of the humans. Yes, he held the camera long enough to catch one or two of them crying - the money shot for any documentary - about their stricken pets (the wobbly pig, the fat cat), but in the main, unless you already think people who love their animals are in some way emotionally confused, the programme didn't seek to enforce that unkind view.

There was, I have to say, a hint of unecessary stereotyping, when the narration felt the need to tell us that Sue (above), the "owner" of Jack Russell Katie, had never been married. So what? The implication was: can't get on with humans, loves her dog. And yet, she loved her disabled mum Doris, too, and had clearly devoted much of her life to looking after both. But hey, as if to prove that not all pet lovers are social misfits, they cut to a city type, with a lovely family in "upmarket Putney" (their words), who nobly massaged his incontinent cat over the toilet and fitted him with a nappy for nighttime. You see? Even people with spouses and kids can love pets!

In the main though, Turnbull left the mockery to our fine TV critics. Lucy Mangan in today's Guardian, although seemingly sympathetic to the plight of the animals, signed off with this pearl of wisdom: "It was a charming and impressively uncynical film ... which left you in no doubt either as to the love that exists between man and beast, nor the dangers of letting that love shade into the selfishness of keeping alive an animal whose quality of life has long since declined." The dangers? I saw no selfishness in this film. Clearly, the lethal injection was always hovering like the syringe of Damocles for some of the animals, not least the pot-bellied pig, for whom no diagnosis seemed forthcoming, but going to great lengths to improve the quality of your animal's life after or during a decline strikes me as unselfish in the extreme.

These were devoted and patient people. (Most of them were older than Lucy Mangan, which may be why their attitudes differ. The young can be so ruthless.) Robert Hanks in the Independent took the opportunity to make this sneery gag: "Later, she took Ethel [the rabbit] along to Jeanette, an animal chiropractor. (What next? A fish osteopath? Cat pilates?)" What the fuck is so strange about an animal chiropractor? Animals have skeletons. The Telegraph previewer wrote, "It's impossible not to believe that these people are rather misguided." Clearly, I respectfully disagree.

But then, my heart is in pieces.

In order to illustrate Collings & Herrin Podcast Number 39 we have been replaced by our own lunches (left to right): Marks & Spencer chilli and coriander king prawns; Marks & Spencer nutritionally balance super-whole food salad; Marks & Spencer freshly prepared pineapple, mango, kiwi, raspberry & blueberry; Andrew's homemade organic chilli with courgettes, artichokes, pepper, coriander, spinach and broccoli; Andrew's homemade organic, wheat-free plum, apple and sultana crumble. Which looks best? You decide. The podcast is equally two-sided: some of it looks good and aspirational but is oddly tasteless, some of it looks unpromising but is actually very nutritious and tasty. Again, you decide.

Look, as we do all too regularly, at the iTunes audio comedy podcast charts, and see our highest ever position: number 9, above Armstrong & Miller. (We are even at 16 in the iTunes audio and video podcast comedy charts, which, again, is a new peak.) Having spent months in the wilderness, we are, briefly, back.

I didn't have this blog in 2001. If I had done, I doubt I'd have received quite as many emails after the attacks on the Twin Towers on September 11 as I have done since the news broke that Jon Gaunt has been sacked from TalkSport over the "Nazi" insult described previously. It is beneath me to gloat about the fate of a fellow broadcaster (I actually don't think he should have been sacked, merely reprimanded, despite the loud-mouthed, bullying nature of the interview - it's the climate of fear and that climate can affect us all), but it is at least reassuring to know I have become a lightning rod for Gaunt-based news. Thank you for keeping me abreast.

He's been let go from radio stations before. It comes with the territory. It won't stop him from calling people a "Nazi", even if he has to do it at a bus stop. For balance, here's the story as reported in the Independent, and here it is as reported in The Sun, for whom he is a still a well-remunerated columnist.

A quote, though, from the Independent's interview with him in January this year: "I'm Jon Gaunt. I've got a column in The Sun, a national radio show and I'm constantly on telly."

Even if you are not watching BBC1's Strictly Come Dancing on a Saturday night, you will no doubt have picked up on the fact that former political journalist John Sergeant and his professional dance partner Kristina Rihanoff are at the eye of a storm. The chatter has gone overground. Let me quickly decode it for you.

I am a huge fan of Strictly and watch it every week avidly - albeit I sensibly fast-forward through the Sunday results show to around 36 minutes in, thus arriving at the crux: which two couples must compete in the "dance-off" to secure their place in next week's show (the rest of the Sunday show is filler and need not trouble anyone beyond actual ballroom dancing nuts, or fans of Anton du Beke, who was jettisoned from the competition in week two, due to being paired up with Gillian Taylforth). For a total of seven mixed weeks, we have watched John Sergeant, not a natural dancer but a man of great good humour and a wry sense of self-effacing realism, be among the worst contestants technically and yet escape the dance-off. The professional judges have been, by and large, savage and yet each week, the public have voted to keep him in. What was once a bit of a laugh when dead-legs like Gary Rhodes and Phil Daniels were weeded out has now curdled into a diplomatic incident, as able hoofers like Heather Small and now Cherie Lunghi have been forced out. Gordon Brown will be forced to comment any day now.

The purist line is this: it's a dance competition, and nine weeks into it there should be no bad dancers left. Favourites like rugby's Austin Healey, acting's Tom Chambers and pop's Rachel Stevens, not to mention polo's Jodie Kidd who is one of the most improved contestants (and my favourite, for what it's worth), are still joined in the spangly line-up by a portly little fella who used to be on the news but is now on the Dave channel, giving it a good old go, but not really cutting it. Dancers who work their legwarmers off, week after week, are now being eliminated, despite the judges' through-the-floor marks, due to the way the vote is divided between professionals and the public. (Judge Arlene Phillips went on Breakfast News and moaned that John sits around reading the Guardian instead of giving himself a heart attack.)

The democratic line - the line I take - is this: it's an entertainment programme, and if the public want John in, they have the right to vote him in. Are we not entertained? I don't believe it's a case of Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards Syndrome - Britain loves a loser etc. - as Sergeant isn't that bad. Julian Clary, with a much more promising build and a background in showbiz, was much worse technically in series two, and the same thing happened. You can't argue with love, and the public loved him. They love John. (Actually, we don't know the proportion of the votes, so it may be that John is squeaking through every week by a mere handful, and that his time is nigh. Then snooty people who don't watch the programme can shut up and go back to not watching it.)

I've read some really cruel things about John Sergeant in the papers this week. Some hack columnist in the Standard yesterday called him "ugly", which is a) irrelevent, and b) subjective. He's a 64-year-old man who never set himself up as "handsome", so what's with the bitchy attacks on his looks? (He also called him "balding", which is true, but again hardly relevent.) Strictly is actually the very definition of a Popularity Contest, and John Sergeant is currently among the most popular seven contestants. Phillips called him a "dancing pig", which is also below the cummerbund.

If you hand the direction of a TV programme over the electorate, you must live by their collective decision. I say, if somebody is prepared to crank up their phone bill in a recession, continually voting for a man to be on a programme, they deserve him to be on it.

Admittedly, only a four-minute job, but a job nonetheless. I love Front Row on Radio 4. I think we've established already that I love Mark Lawson. But I also love John Wilson and Kirsty Lang and all the producers who work tirelessly, five days a week, 52 weeks a year, to fill 30 minutes of Radio 4 a day, usually live, with Arts. Because a new horror film is coming out called Quarantine, which is all set in one house, one of the many enterprising producers got in touch and asked me to write a "column" (which is basically a short essay, or rant, written and read out by the author) about films that are set in one location. Because I clearly don't care about being on the radio any more, I said yes immediately.

Enthused by a flippant comedic conceit I came up with on Friday - which I knew would be easily achievable in post-production in their able hands - I wrote it yesterday morning, recorded it in the afternoon and it went out, on Radio 4, last night. It's up on the iPlayer, and if you want to listen to it, it's at about 15 mins in, but the whole edition's pretty good. Typically for Front Row, it came after a discussion about I'm A Celebrity and before an interview with the Swedish crime novelist Henning Mankell. I love Front Row.

Now, back to not being on the radio.

The phrase "a good innings" is often rolled out when somebody dies, but Reg Varney, beloved star of On The Buses (and attendant box office-smashing movies) has died aged 92. That's 92. He was born in 1916. Varney seems to have done very little of note after On The Buses ended in 1973 - he did a series called Down The Gate in 1975, but I can't pretend to have heard of it; then he appeared in Eric Sykes' The Plank in 1979 before effectively retiring to paint and play the piano, both of which he did with much accomplishment. Anyway, let us praise him with this fact:

On 27 June, 1967, Reg Varney was the first person in the world to use a cashpoint machine. The first ever electronic ATM was installed at Barclays Bank in Enfield, North London, and for reasons I have yet to specify, Reg was the first to use it, as shown in this picture.

Gawd bless him and his turtleneck jumper and his eye for the clippies. (He was already in his fifties when he was chasing those birds with Jack down the depot.) Anyone younger than 40 will presumably struggle to place Reg, but it is their loss.

In the 38th Collings & Herrin Podcast - 39th if you include Monday's, 37a - having resolutely failed to get a job in radio, we get back to basics and talk about what's in the newspapers, once we've established more logistical faults with Goodnight Sweetheart, tried to apologise to Jason Manford, set Charlie Boorman a new travel task, reminisced about the credit crunch-beating free food and drink at the Radio Academy, accused Michael MacIntyre of being the mastermind behind Sachsgate and made clear, once again, that Richard is doing better on telly than Andrew, despite benign positional vertigo brought on by Marks & Spencer's ready meals. And we look carefully at the illustrations (pictured above) from a book available at Sainsbury's but not intended for eight year-olds, because it shows how to have sex in the bath. Keep the pic to hand when you listen to the podcast, because it's quite visual, that section. (Have we learned nothing?)

We've shot up the iTunes charts this week, after weeks and weeks in the doldrums, perhaps due to kind mentions on Phill Jupitus and Phil Wilding's excellent and more successful Perfect Ten podcast. Every little helps. Welcome to the podcast brotherhood. (There is already loose talk of us doing a foursome for Christmas.)

At 11am, an announcement went out over the PA at the British Library saying that, in accordance with the Royal British Legion's wishes, it would be observing a second two minutes' silence in remembrance of those who died in the wars - this happens whenever the anniversary of Armistice Day, 11 November, falls on days other than Sundays. I was in the Humanities Reading Room, where, for two minutes, all the silent people going silently about their research stayed extra silent. It was quite surreal. We could do a nine-hour silence in here.

Jolly-faced TalkSport presenter Jon Gaunt has been suspended after he called a London councillor a "Nazi" during a live debate. Sony award-winning Gaunt, who writes a column for The Sun, also called the councillor an "ignorant pig" during the discussion about a local authority plan to ban smokers from fostering children. A "number" of complaints were received and he's been relieved of his duties while the "matter is investigated". Soon there really will be nobody left on the radio, and Richard and I will return!

To be fair, Gaunt seems to have made a swift on-air apology, which gives him back a bit of the moral advantage, but his frothing, red-faced indignation schtick is hardwired to land him in hot water. He was talking to Redbridge councillor Michael Stark on Friday and says he meant to call him a "health Nazi", which he apparently clarified. (See how much I am using the word "apparently" - it's because I didn't hear the broadcast, and can thus comment on it no further. But I wish somebody would put it up on YouTube.*)

His beef is based on the fact that he was in a care home, as unflinchingly detailed in his book, Undaunted. He ranted about the same issue - smoking foster parents - in his Sun column, saying, "This is the same warped logic that condemns black children to a life in care rather than let them be fostered by white couples. The same master race philosophy that forbids fat couples from adopting." He then called the Social Services "the SS." It must be very confusing being Jon Gaunt.

JonGauntMichaelStark

* Here's the interview. He does call Stark a "Nazi". He changes it to "health Nazi" and "health fascist" after Stark's protests. Then he goes back to "Nazi", daring him to take legal action, and accuses him of "bullying". It's a very emotive interview, with Gaunt's background in care, but he loses the moral high ground as soon as he calls the councillor a Nazi. Game over, really. I don't think he should be sacked, or anything, but he does make a tit of himself. He calls Stark an "idiot" and "smug", which is not debate really, is it? He reads out an email/text from someone who says they're offended by the "Nazi" comment as they're "a Jewish man," to which Gaunt replies, "What's it got to do with being Jewish?" He says, "I'd like to apologise to the listeners" for losing his rag, but he doesn't apologise to Stark.

Richard and I were invited to do a presentation about podcasting to the Radio Academy, at their Radio At The Edge conference at London's Milbank Tower today. We thought, in the spirit of what we do, we should record it as a podcast, and Collings & Herrin Podcast Number 37a (it may take until tomorrow morning to be loaded up) is the bonus result. It's not an official podcast, as it's just us explaining how we do what we do and why we do it, to an occasionally baffled, occasionally amused audience of about 100 or so radio professionals. They were very nice to us, and let us have a free beer afterwards, and - just for context - the presentation before ours was a Transatlantic Skype link-up with a really impressive Californian tech guy called Leo Laporte who does about ten times the amount of podcasting we do, and runs it as a profitable business, thus making us look like amateurs. But we have more fun than him, swearing. And look at how few radio professionals are prepared to sit in the front row at a conference.

Ooh, and look at these nice pics, taken, respectively by Byrion (that's all it says on Flickr) and Steve Bowbrick (that's the great thing about being at a conference aimed at radio tech people - they have really good cameras in their phones and post stuff really quickly):

And if you wish to see the full results of the podcast survey: they are here. I warn you now, you'll have a lot of scrolling to do, what with 1,442 respondents, but the pie charts are really good. Thanks to all who responded.

This is just for Richard, really, who thinks it weird that I take screen-grabs of my own gormless face when I'm on News 24 and put them on my blog. The reason I do this is because I am not on the telly very often, so it's a novelty, and it makes my Mum and Dad proud, and it still amuses me that they let me be on. And the reason Richard even remarks upon it is because he doesn't know how to make screen grabs. This was me on News 24 today in my yellow shirt (I only have two shirts), looking uncomfortable on a stool with Julian Worricker, who's my favourite host. So what? Move on.

In the historic 37th Collings & Herrin Podcast, we HAVE A LAUGH about the new world we now live in and discuss the big stories of the week: Morrisons' half-price beef offer [see: above], Gary Sparrow's paucity of ambition, the chances of Ed Milliband's picture being made into a giant hat in Kenya, Lewis Hamilton's big mistake, Blake Fielder-Civil's silver tongue, Jason Manford's paucity of ambition (not that we have anything against him), and a man called Barack Obama, who is the President, despite being a socialist, and half-American.

Don't forget, there will be a BONUS PODCAST on Monday (which should be up by Tuesday): Richard and I are doing a 45-minute presentation to members of the Radio Academy at a conference. Since we are there to talk about podcasting, we thought we should record it as a podcast. There will be a normal podcast next Friday.

These are the badges they gave out at the CNN party last night. I didn't see many of the red ones worn, not even by New Labour's stormtroopers, who are all right wing, you know.

And this is the cocktails menu.

I ain't never gonna forget it. And I can say that I was "up for Ohio".

As we speak, at 04.17, Barack Obama is the new president of the United States. This may be old news by now, but I just woke up after an unplanned nap. When I nodded off, in front of the telly, Obama was on 220 votes. (I'm on the sofa of some friends who had already nodded off before me!) It's all very late for me. I managed to stay up to this unearthly hour by attending the CNN Election Night Party in Central London, in a converted church lit up by stars and stripes and serving three cocktails: the CNN Electini (Belvedere vodka martini shaken or stirred, garnished with blueberry and raspberry), the Donkey Dazzler (Bacardi, cranberry and pineapple juice shaken with fresh ginger and garnished with lime) and the Electric Elephant (Jack Daniel's, lemon juice, syrup de gomme and angostura bitters, shaken and topped with soda). I had a few bottles of Samuel Adams beer instead, for fear of flaking out. It was quite a smart do - well outside of my comfort zone - and they were showing CNN, obviously, on a wall-sized screen. I rubbed shoulders with Ed Milliband, Harriett Harman, Trevor Phillips, Gurinda Chadha, Dianne Abbott, Josh Hartnett, James Purnell, Shami Chakrabati and others. The only downside to this party was the fact that it ended at 3am, when they started sweeping up around us, forcing the move to my friends' house. Anyway, I just woke up and he had won. On Sky, which I'm watching, Irvine Welsh is an unlikely pundit, with a Panama hat on. I'll get some sleep now, on this welcome sofa, but it's looking like a done deal. McCain is conceding in Phoenix. Hooray. He's being pretty gracious, actually.

Today, Tuesday 4 November 2008, could be historic. It could be. America could vote in its first ever black president. It could do the opposite. I will be at the British Library, in the Humanities Reading Room. But in a way, we are all in Humanity's reading room today, in hushed silence, waiting. It could go either way. Perhaps Lewis Hamilton's apparently spectacular Grand Prix win is a sign. There's a letter in the new Sight & Sound praising a recent feature on the filmmaker Steve McQueen for not calling him a "black director", nor referring to what he does as "black cinema". (Having seen McQueen's Hunger, perhaps the best film of the year, I'd say it's closer to "Irish cinema" anyway.) The letter writer's point is that he feels such black-and-white labels are now irrelevant, even perhaps demeaning in the sheer broadness of the label. Why should a filmmaker who happens to be black be labelled as such. I can see where he's coming from (it's a stark reminder of those unenlightened days in the 80s when criminals who were black would be described as such in the media when white offenders would carry no colour code), and maybe after tonight's count, we can all stop saying "black".

Unless the old white man wins.

This is me, on what used to be called News 24, talking about a film that everybody else has already talked about: Quantum Of Solace. I enjoyed "having" Gavin Esler, as he really seems to be interested in films. But look how far apart they made us sit! Imagine if Mark Kermode gets Jonathan Ross's job on Film 2008, and then I get his job on News 24! At least some good will come of this latest BBC witch-hunt. If you want to watch me trying to talk as fast as Mark (can't be done), it's preserved in cyber-aspic here. (Do you think, after 16 months of filling in for him, that they might change his name on the credits when I'm on?)