Michele Hewitson: Coverage takes the mickey

I don't know. You leave the country for a week to go to Disneyland in Hong Kong and you come back to find the country's gone all Mickey Mouse.

I turned on the telly when I got home - there are only so many Chinese soaps you can take - to see a picture of Don Brash with the word cock cheekily displayed above him. He had been at a pub, I think, called the Cock and Bull and TV3 just couldn't resist. Hilarious.

This reminded me of the cock episode in The Office where Tim phones Gareth, says cock and hangs up. This was so good we tried it at our office. Hilarious.

Not so funny was the fact that they were screening episodes of The Office on the plane. Because, when you think about it - and it is quite likely most people never will - it would be quite hard to kill yourself on a plane, and that is the effect watching The Office still has.

Really, how would you do it? Still, at least you can think: I might be stuck on this bloody plane for 11 hours but at least I don't work in a paper-supply office in Slough.

Anyway, I missed seeing how telly would deal with politicians' testicles, which is another reason for the counting of blessings.

And so to the election. In which, if John Campbell was telly's Bob the Builder with his Holy Moleys!, TV3's analyst Therese Arsenau was the night's Peter Dunne.

We flicked over from TV One in time to catch her pompously ticking off her fellow panellists for over-simplifying their take on the results. Well, that sent the fur flying.

We were hoping she would be set upon by Deborah Coddington and Michael Mascara Laws - and how we would have cheered - but no such luck.

By the time they returned from the ad break young Holy Moley had obviously mopped the fracas up with his bonhomie sponge. What a shame.

We stayed mostly with One because, as one couch critic said, TV3's got a bunch of losers. And on One there was also the lovely Mark Sainsbury, all a-quiver with gingery excitement, doing an excellent job.

Line of the night went to Susan Wood who said, to Hugh Sundae and Jeremy Wells in a pub in Greymouth with a pair of pink cocktails before them: "You look like a couple of Auckland poofters".

Things got a bit mad. Election night telly is like a telethon without people taking their shirts off for money, although there is still the prospect of a naked Keith Locke to haunt us.

There was breaking news. A bloke in a light plane threatening to crash into the Sky Tower. Goodness, I don't think we've ever had breaking news on election night before. A mate texted: "Holmes looking 4 attention." Actually, that was the best line of the night.

Holey Moley got over-excited, if that is not an over-simplification. "Anyone know anything?" he shouted, desperately.

Nope. No one knew a thing. And we didn't know much more by the end of the night, but jolly entertaining it all was.

In other breaking news, I have come back to find that there will soon be, not just one, but two new shows which involve celebrities and singing, and that one of these shows will feature Mikey Havoc.

When I read this I found myself thinking of those Chinese soaps. And ways to do myself in.