Concern grows for Jeremy Vine's health following BBC election coverage
4 May 2007
Concern is growing for the mental wellbeing of BBC Radio 2 DJ Jeremy Vine following last night's election coverage. Mr Vine took over the job of attempting to explain meaningless statistics, pointing at ridiculous graphics and generally being more excitable than is healthy at 4am from Peter Snow last year, after the legendary excitable person burst into flames during the 2005 general election.Faced with criticism that he wasn't nearly as mad as Mr Snow, Mr Vine last night arrived at the BBC's virtual election studio wearing a pair of bizarre trousers, one clown shoe and a red nose, which it later transpired had been superimposed by the BBC's graphics department during rehearsals as a practical joke but had become stuck.
Mr Vine managed to remain fairly calm – "about the level of two hungry ferrets in a sack," said one expert – throughout the Ten O'clock News and Newsnight, but by the time David Dimbleby had had his injections and the results programme was ready to come on air, Mr Vine was visibly foaming at the mouth. Only the quick thinking of researcher Greg Mullet, who cooled him down by spraying him with a bottle of Tizer, averted catastrophic overheating.
One insider told DeadBrain that had Mr Vine overheated at that point, David Dimbleby would have been forced to take his glasses off and replace them several times, before leaving Emily Maitlis to present the entire programme single-handedly and potentially drunkenly from a pub in Westminster. A BBC investigation is now underway.
However, Mr Vine's behaviour got still stranger as the night went on. After being almost decapitated by a virtual reality wind turbine – a nightmare reminder of an incident involving Mr Snow in 2004 – he had a virtual reality house collapse on him, shouted wildly as footage of Tony Blair playing tennis was displayed behind him and ran around like a lunatic as a virtual Menzies Campbell, dressed as Ali G, started rapping.
A planned feature which involved using a virtual replica of Boris Johnson's hair to explain the results in Conservative target areas had to be abandoned in the early hours when the computer given the task dramatically exploded, showering Mr Vine with pieces of virtual Boris Johnson. Mr Vine responded to this by throwing himself on the floor and rolling around, before being carried off by men in white coats. A confused David Dimbleby responded by immediately taking his glasses off.
Election coverage in Scotland and Wales is meanwhile thought to have been less exciting, despite the decision in Cardiff to base Huw Edwards on a broken fairground ride.
Late news
The virtual reality Menzies Campbell, still draped in virtual 'bling', has escaped from the BBC studio and is currently terrorising the population of London. Police say so far three people have died and fifty have been injured. The Army is being brought in to shoot at the virtual Mr Campbell with big guns.Jeremy Vine was unavailable for comment.
