It can be difficult for broadcasters to fill Bank Holiday schedules.

Many local radio stations, for example, will air a totally different line-up of presenters on Bank Holidays - not necessarily lesser lights, but regular presenters filling different slots according to need, since others are off.

TV is trickier, especially for smaller niche stations. And as BBC Parliament's editor Peter Knowles explains, his channel is "the narrowest of niche channels"...

"You’d have to travel down the channel listings as far as Discovery Ironing +1 before you’d find something more niche. What it says in the lid is very much what is inside: Parliament.

"So, over a bank holiday weekend where the weather was less than inspiring, the channel made use of some surprising resources."

"From the archive, ten years on from New Labour coming to power, BBC Parliament showed in entirety the election night broadcast and this ran all day across the rainy bank holiday Monday.

"We’ve been told that many participants in the 1997 election stayed glued to their sets, throughout the day. (Next stop in our tour of the election archive:1987, which is showing 5 October)."

[source: BBC Editors' Blog]

And by now you'll have guessed which sad idiot watched almost the entire 14-hour repeat of the 1997 election. I couldn't help it. I was only channel-surfing and there, suddenly, was Dimbleby, about to cross to Enfield Southgate where he was told Michael Portillo could lose his seat.

The moments passed in blurs: Tony Blair speaks to his constituents at Sedgefield, William Hague goes on air refusing to speculate on who might be next Tory leader, Portillo's seat goes, other leading Conservative figures drop like flies around the country, Taunton goes Lib Dem (I remember that!), John Major leaves Downing Street, Tony Blair arrives, all with the man Dimbleby somehow keeping his eyelids prised apart throughout.

A few people have left comments on Peter Knowles' little article thanking him for the repeat, since they were too young to fully understand it when it happened first time around.

I know exactly how they feel - so was I, and this was a brilliant second chance to relive a defining political moment (there's not been an election like it) from a time when I would only have been 12. I can remember, at school the following day, OJ and I adopting staunch pro-Conservative stances and generally acting upset, simply because I don't think either of us had been introduced to the concept of not being Conservative. (OJ still hasn't, whereas I've adopted the position of being nothing in particular and a dead, non-voting loss to society.)

It must be said that the 1997 broadcast was a high water mark for the use of graphics. They look good even by today's standards. Peter Snow's swing-o-meter has never since reached the highs it did on that night, thanks mainly to the gainful employment most Labour candidates were able to offer it. I think this was the last election to have just enough graphics capability to look good, without over-egging the pudding a bit.

I'm now counting down the days til the 1987 election's repeated - one I definitely don't remember. But then I can barely remember what happened in 2005 now. It's a good job the local elections were last week, otherwise I'd have turned up shocked to discover it was Labour taking a hammering, having just seen John Major fighting back the tears as he left Downing Street for the cricket.

Come on, Gordon. Get into power and call a general election. We need another exciting one, I can't wait til October.