Even Rishi’s comedic counterparts couldn’t make him laugh

So this is where it ended for Rishi: surrounded by lunatics – literal and metaphorical – one with a silver bucket on his head, saying sorry to a party he’d led to the slaughter. And me sitting on the floor of his leisure centre election count, trying to stay awake. “Beam me up, Scottie…”

I landed in Northallerton shortly before midnight, a pretty town in North Yorkshire that reeks of manure. I allowed myself a rare cigarette. If not this night, when? Give it a month and Labour will have it banned.

The leisure centre was, well, a leisure centre: journalists beavering away on laptops surrounded by dumbbells and trunks on special offer. We had a telly but no remote: it had been nicked during the last mayoral election, so was now kept under lock and key at reception. If you wanted the volume up, you had to ask security.

Tories fell like statues in a Soviet republic. Starmer won in Holborn; the woman who signs for the deaf seemed to imitate a yawn. Was it me or did the Conservatives appear delighted with the result and Labour overawed? Twas the worst result for the Tories since 1906, which Jacob Rees Mogg remembers well (that’s when he bought his seat for 12 guineas).

Now Jacob I really will miss. He’s a gentleman.

As for the Prime Minister, he faced an easy battle against a boy called Wilson and another called Callaghan – and they, Labour and Lib Dem, were at least sane. A PM’s count always attracts “colourful” candidates who profess to be from outer space or screamingly funny (neither stands up to inspection). They’re also, I discovered, bitter rivals.

Sir Archibald Stanton of the Monster Raving Loony Party carried a ventriloquist dummy that he hadn’t even bothered to master. I asked for one of his policies and was surprised to hear one of my own gags: we’ll solve the small boats crisis by replacing the border patrol with GP receptionists. That way, no one gets in! I laughed politely. On Monday, I shall sue.

What do you think of the Loonies, I asked Count Binface? “They’re quite racist,” he replied. The aristocratic, intergalactic trash can turned out to be a hoot and we had a fun debate about Brexit and croissants – before he revealed that people often ask if his true identity is Tim Stanley. My eye was also drawn to Louise Dickens, of Galloway’s Workers Party, who clasped an unlit cigarette like a security blanket. She’s a former Tory councillor and born-again Christian who hates war.

The most exotic creature, however, was Niko Omilana, an internet star, who wandered about with half a dozen followers – teenage boys dressed identically to himself, in suits and multicoloured shades – pronouncing that he’d won the seat and would be forming a government shortly. We are, he explained to a tired broadcaster, not individuals but one collective being. If so, I asked, what do you do when one of you needs the loo? “We help each other,” he replied.

The gestalt studied ballots with an eerie intensity and clapped if they spotted a vote. “I’d rather be assimilated by the Borg than be in their party,” said Count Binface. They gave us both the creeps.

The results ticked by – Shapps, Penny, Lenin torn down in Norfolk – and we knew the PM was near because security confiscated our water bottles, lest we toss them in his face (bizarre but true). His arrival was planned so that he’d spend as little time among us as possible: the very moment the final tallies were announced, he marched into the hall with his wife – faces of thunder – and disappeared into a side room to review the ballot. Then up onto the stage he ran, where he stood frozen like a tiny mannequin, looking neither left nor right, as if his body were here but his mind was already in California.

“Come on Rishi,” I thought. “Laugh!”

It is a fitting epitaph to Sunak’s leadership that even when standing in a Star Wars bar of talking bins and ventriloquist dummies, he couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge the absurdity of his situation. Instead, he spoke of failure in the same customer service voice he occasionally applied to success – while behind him, for heaven knows what reason, Niko held up the letter L.

Thank heavens it was over. I staggered out into the morning sunshine, into a new dawn on a planet now run by Labour – at 5am. The wheels of British democracy take far too long to turn. Say what you like about dictatorships, at least everyone gets to bed at a sensible hour.