Newton's optic:And you join us here in Ballycarryon Leisure Centre where counting is now under way for the constituency of Upper Down in this truly historic Assembly election.
I'm afraid that we don't have any results just yet but excitement is building as the little old ladies emerge from the first tea break of this truly historic morning to begin arranging ballot papers into neat little stacks on their trestle tables and yes! yes! I can just see the electoral office officials moving among them now to allocate the stubby HB pencils which the little old ladies will place beside their napkin-wrapped slices of lemon drizzle cake in preparation for the final tally.
In the meantime, I'll be asking an expert how the six-seat proportional representation system works with respect to the d'Hondt mechanism, then I'll ask a second expert if the first expert fails to make any sense and so on until every expert has been interviewed.
But first it does look as if the number of pencils is down considerably on the last election although the Northern Ireland Office says this is perfectly normal as the little old ladies often hide them in their enormous handbags.
I believe we can speak now to Sinn Féin candidate Anne Phoblacht who does not agree with that assessment. Ms Phoblacht? Yes. Yes. I see.
And what makes you so certain that securocrats have stolen the pencils? Indeed. Quite.
And I'm sure many viewers were not aware that HB stands for "Hail Britannia".
I'm joined now by DUP candidate Jeremiah Dingleberry who will respond to those remarks in precisely the same length of time as required by the Electoral Broadcasting (Compulsory Impartiality) Act 1934. Mr Dingleberry? Yes. Yes. 15 seconds, Mr Dingleberry. Thank you. Goodbye.
And I should point out that Iran denies supplying the IRA with self-propelling pencils. But back to the count and I think we can announce, yes, yes, we can announce that Jeremiah Dingleberry has met the quota which means his excess votes will be transferred to Mrs Dingleberry and Mr Dingleberry jnr, unless they don't make the quota in which case their own votes will be transferred between them until one makes the quota, unless neither makes the quota in which case all the little old ladies will need another pencil.
So we'll turn now to Belfast Times columnist Pundit Singh for some up-to-the-minute analysis and I guess the question everyone is asking is could tight vote management in the Dingleberry camp take this to a fourth count? A fifth count? A sixth count?
We'll be here all day! All week? Half of next week? No, I hadn't forgotten about the postal ballots. Thank you, Pundit Singh, and I'm just hearing that Anne Phoblacht has also made the quota which means that we can now show the special election computer graphic under the Electoral Broadcasting (Computer Graphic) Act 1986 where orange represents the DUP, green represents Sinn Féin and yellow represents the remaining lemon drizzle cake, but we'll just interrupt that for an acceptance speech by Anne Phoblacht then fade out for more commentary when she starts speaking Irish, before returning to her speech and our graphic in an agreed sequence leading to a full restoration of the lunchtime bulletin.
First, though, it's back to the studio on this truly historic day for all our pencils.