Like John McCain, I just fell short and the fault was all mine. Well, actually, quite a long way short.

My determination to witness history in the making, a seismic shift in global politics and to discover if Jeremy Vine would ever complete the large on-screen jigsaw that looked like it had been transplanted from the CBeebies website, finally foundered when I decided there was only so much hypothetical analysis of undeclared results that even an election junkie like me could take.

My strategy of huddling under a blanket with a mug of Ovaltine to watch the coverage of the American election results might well have been flawed, but I had mistakenly thought that the unfolding drama would have me gripped from dusk to dawn.

Perhaps I should have seen the warning signs.

David Dimbleby introduced the BBC’s programme by stating that the only thing that mattered now were the votes - a penetrating insight that really ought to have alerted me to the fact that I was in for a long wait, given that 201 million ballot papers needed to be counted.

Still, there was some pleasure to be had in watching roving correspondents struggling to fill dead air before anything happened and with their efforts to convince us they knew exactly what McCain and Barack Obama were thinking.

At one point, a reporter at a college in Chicago asserted that the outcome would be known when “time develops” - a phenomenon even Stephen Hawking has seemingly not encountered before.

Over at the McCain HQ, a BBC reporter was asked to explain what was happening as she stood looking down at an empty hall and a stage, on which two dancers in silver costumes and large cowboy hats were rehearsing what presumably had been intended to be a victory routine.

The answer should have been “not much” but naturally, we were treated to a lengthy disposition on what might be going on in McCain’s mind.

I think it was about this point I reluctantly conceded defeat and took to my bed. I don’t know whether Vine is still fiddling with his morphing electronic gizmos but I wouldn’t be surprised. Perhaps no one has the heart to tell him it’s all over.