The First Minister

I arrived at BBC Scotland HQ at 11:30pm on 7th May to appear on the election TV and radio programmes overnight as I was booked to be there until 4am. Although we were hours away from the first result an exit poll had been published predicting that the SNP would win 58 of the 59 seats in Scotland. A truly incredible prediction.

I spent the first couple of hours on BBC Radio Scotland, Radio 4, Radio 5 Live and the BBC World Service. After that I took a break in the green room and managed to see the first result declared. It was the Kilmarnock and Loudon seat where our candidate Alan Brown received over 30,000 votes. This was nearly double the amount of votes that the Labour Party incumbent received. A truly remarkable result and a massive, record breaking swing to the SNP.

This set the pattern for everything that followed with SNP gain after SNP gain with all of them showing massive swings to us. Many of the swings were record breaking with the biggest swing from Labour to the SNP being 39.3% in Glasgow North East.

Eventually the result from my own area was declared and the SNP candidate, Kirsten Oswald beat the leader of the Labour party in Scotland. A fabulous moment for all of us.

I then did some more media including BBC Wales TV before at 6am going onto BBC Scotland TV for what turned out to be a straight two hour stint on TV. During my time on this show the final result came in and the final tally was 56 seats for the SNP and one seat each for the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties.

At around 8am the First Minister arrived and took my place on the programme. When she finished her interview we headed up to the top floor of BBC Scotland HQ where Nicola completed another interview, this time for the BBC election show being broadcast from London. The First Minister then headed to the STV studios for more interviews but as it was 9am I headed for home.

This blip was taken on the top floor of the BBC building as the First Minister was being interviewed for the BBC show being broadcast from London and shows the Finnieston crane in the background.