Ballymoney: Victory was a foregone conclusion, but if he took 50 per cent of the poll, the Rev Ian Paisley said, it would be "sugar on the cake".
In the event, he took 54 per cent of it, and as he proudly pointed out, his 25,156 votes were more than even Gerry Adams won in West Belfast. The cake could hardly have been any sweeter; the news of David Trimble's defeat just put jam on it.
Much as he likes his cake, however, the DUP leader never loses his appetite for eating journalists (alive). Having already taken a bite out of the BBC's Noel Thompson - one of his favourites snacks - he was in the mood for second helpings as he arrived at Ballymoney count centre.
RTÉ offered him a plateful when during a radio interview, the Dublin studio tried to introduce a three-way link with Gerry Adams. Dr Paisley does not talk to Gerry Adams, something he reminded the RTÉ producer in Ballymoney about. She in turn reminded Dublin. But when somebody in studio forgot, the DUP leader excused himself from the interview and rounded on the unfortunate producer, accusing her - in the wrong - of lying.
"Tell the truth and shame the devil," he declaimed, as she tried to get a word in edgeways. He then stormed out of the media room, leaving RTÉ to assume that the televised interview they had planned with him was now off the agenda.
Not a bit of it. Two minutes later, Ian Paisley jnr - "Little Ian" as he's known, despite there being nothing little about him - was back in to say there'd be no problem with Big Ian doing a piece to camera. The apparent walkout was not final, and talks with RTÉ had already resumed. There's hope for the peace process yet.
Still, you had to search hard for signs that he would ever again envisage a deal with Sinn Féin. His thought for the day, repeated in every interview, was that "we need to win the war first, if we have any hope of winning the peace".
Asked about IRA statements, he spat: "The IRA can make statements till they're blue in the face, and Adams can talk until his beard falls off, but we don't believe him."
He added: "In any other country, they'd lock him up." He was almost as contemptuous about Tony Blair, promising to give him "a good warm lug" when he rang Downing Street later.
The prime minister might be sick of hearing about "Eye-raq", he said, but he'd be even sicker when the DUP was finished with him. And yet in the midst of the bombastic rhetoric, you sensed that Dr Paisley was occasionally holding himself back. He still says "no surrender", but he doesn't say "never" as much as he used to.
In his 80th year, the big man has achieved many of his dearest ambitions, having now all but buried the Ulster Unionist Party that he has dogged for four decades.
Thanking God for his latest victory and for the strength to face "the task given to me many years ago when I saw what was happening to this country", he affected sadness yesterday that his worst predictions had come true.
But there was a noted of personal vanity in his delight at outpolling Gerry Adams: "I'm higher than him now." And there was wounded pride when he berated his UUP constituency opponent for suggesting he (Dr Paisley) was "unknown" in Westminster, or on the ground in North Antrim. "I'm known around the world," he said. "Even the Vatican knows me."
