I've just interviewed the former home secretary Charles Clarke who says that he was sacked by Tony Blair - even though he was offered other jobs in government.
It is clear that Mr Clarke is as bemused as many onlookers by the fact that one day the prime minister said he was the right man for the job, and the next that he had to go.
You can see my interview on News 24 imminently.
PS: I've often interviewed resigning ministers, but this was amongst the bizarrest. When I was called to be told the news, I was naked in bed in a Westminster hotel hoping to get at least an hour's sleep, having stayed up all night covering the local elections. The interesting discovery I've made is that you can go from being in bed to attending a resignation statement in exactly seven minutes.
UPDATE 1159: You can now watch the interview by clicking here
We made it. Just. What a bizarre night.
Less than 14 hours to go until the Ten O'Clock News and the small matter of a government re-shuffle to cover. I must eat another banana.
If you click here, you can scroll through all the posts from overnight, from the first to the last.
Labour has adopted a policy of extreme candour tonight - admitting that tonight's results have been bad. On the other hand, they say it is not a meltdown - pointing out, fairly, that this result is bad but only as bad as it was in 2004 when they came third with 26% of the vote.
The key political question is how they respond to it. Do they say "we've been here before and bounced back so we can do it again"? That is clearly Tony Blair's strategy - hence his reshuffle which will begin in a few hours.
Or, do they say that something more fundamental has to change - the style, the policies and, yes, possibly the leader himself as a number of Labour backbenchers have already said.
All say that they should listen to the electorate - the problem is they don't agree about what the electorate's saying.
The BNP's gain of 11 seats in Barking is sure to deliver them more of the oxygen of publicity which they crave.
As will the angst over whether Margaret Hodge - the Labour MP for the area - unwittingly helped their cause whilst trying to highlight the threat they posed. Our number crunchers say that although - so far - they've got 13 more councillors than before, their vote share has not increased.
Anyone with worries about the BNP should see David Dimbleby's devastating forensic interview with their leader Nick Griffin.
UPDATE 0615: You can watch the interview here.
A mixed night for the Lib Dems.
Their vote share appears to be down about 1%, and there are some particularly important places for them where they have lost control - Islington, for example - and Winchester (the Mark Oaten factor in operation).
A lot of what matters here is momentum - or at least, the perception of it.
The problem for the Liberal Democrats is not that they've had a terrible night. They have had some successes - gaining St Albans (albeit by the pull of a pencil - see earlier), South Lakeland and possibly Richmond. They may be able to claim they've pushed Labour into third place but there isn't much momentum for them to talk about.
Thankfully, we're back. With a new panel of guests.
The video on the BBC News website should be working again as well - click on the 'live video' link to watch.
So we're told. But the studio lights have just gone out again...
This reminds me of another extraordinary election night - when Ken Livingstone first became London mayor.
My job was to fill the long hours of the night whilst David Dimbleby had a few well-deserved hours sleep. The problem that night was the new automated counting machines failed - so I had to broadcast for 4 hours with no results at all.
The search for the power cutter begins...
Labour HQ was also plunged into darkness - but mysteriously Tory HQ in the same area was not.
Following earlier comments from Nick Brown and Martin Salter, Frank Dobson says that the reshuffle will be like rearranging the deckchairs, or the ship's officers, on the Titanic (watch the interview here).
We need, he said, the party to be under new management.
The lights are slowly coming back on but will the PCs and the air conditioning?
Plans to move the whole programme to TV Centre have been abandoned. It was too much fun sitting in a pitch black studio with Stephen Timms, Oliver Letwin and Simon Hughes.
Was it something I said..?
The entire studio has just been plunged into darkness, taking the programme off air.
I am dictating this to a kindly colleague because it's not just the studio that has gone down. It would appear that all power to this building - and a large part of Westminster that we can see out of the windows - has gone.
None of us can remember anything quite like it.
All change on set.
Those of us paid by the BBC sit here all night, but the politicians come and go, popping into different broadcasting outlets - BBC telly and radio, Sky, GMTV, etc etc.
There's a touching solidarity between people of different parties forced to stay up all night.
After Nick Brown, now Martin Salter has raised the Blair factor.
The Labour backbencher (and no serial rebel he) has just come on the programme and declared "we need a clear timetable for the transition" and said he wanted to know that the new leader would have time to bed in.
When Tessa Jowell responded by saying that wasn't necessary I could see - though viewers couldn't - him shaking his head in disagreement.
Many around the Prime Minister say it would be destabilising to say anything else on this issue, because they believe it obsesses the media.
And yet what we are seeing tonight is an MP who has supported the government in tricky patches (for example, over the education bill), saying in effect - 'I need to know when Blair is going'.
The Tories have lost a seat on the length of a pencil!
After three recounts in Wheathampstead in St Albans, the Lib Dems and the Tories both had 1132. The result was decided by whoever picked the longest pencil - and the Lib Dems picked a longer one, taking it from the Tories.
But they won Crawley won on the strength of picking an envelope.
And that's democracy for you!
It's worth mentioning that if you're outside the UK, or not near a TV, you can watch the BBC TV coverage live by visiting the BBC News website and clicking on the live video link.
Well well. It only took until ten past one for the Blair issue to come up - raised by none other than Nick Brown - friend, ally but no relative of Gordon.
"We cannot drift on" he said (watch the interview here), before adding that the party had to listen to people and to avoid looking like an out of touch elite.
When asked whether Tony Blair could repair the problem he replied with a grimace - "he will have to try".
Not the start of a revolution, I grant you - but it was significant that someone who knows that his words are watched carefully spoke out so clearly and so early.
I'm trying my best to milk John Reid when the microphones are off about who'll be moved in the reshuffle - but he's remaining stoically and loyally tight lipped. Or maybe it's that he doesn't know.
Much talk here about whether Geoff Hoon and David Blunkett's earpieces really stopped working when they were asked awkward questions!
It's that time of the night when the mars bars and the bananas come out to boost energy...
Geoff Hoon revealed on BBC One that he's off to Downing Street first thing in the morning - and he looked rather pleased about it (watch the interview here).
Ministers never get asked to walk up that famous street in full view of the cameras only to emerge humiliated having been sacked. Hoon was an obvious candidate to be asked to 'make way for younger blood' - but he appears to sense that there may be better news on the way.
David Cameron has had a couple of early bits of good news, including a relatively easy gain (in Shrewsbury & Atcham) which was on their list of targets.
It's worth remembering that before the Labour crisis began, this election was being seen as a test for David Cameron. His national poll ratings were slipping, and inside his party, people were saying "people might like you, but it's not making them vote Conservative".
If - and it's a big if - the pattern of results continues along these lines, he will be able to see off those who were preparing to tell him that the headlines weren't enough.
There are signs - BBC analysts tell me - that the Tory advance is very much concentrated in what would be considered traditional Tory territory. The party's vote is up most strongly in the south of England in relatively middle-class wards and in wards with low proportions of people in poor health. Ironically Cameron's success may be in rejuvenating the core Tory vote!
There is danger in all this for the Tories. If Labour's crisis is magnifying the Tory vote - then it could all just be a deception. And remember, previous Tory leaders - William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith, even Michael Howard - have allowed themselves to be deceived by nights like this.
Tonight Labour can't do worse than expectations because expectations of their performance are so low. It means it will be hard to distinguish a poor night for the party from a dire one.
So, the question is - how do you judge tonight's results? And already the mother of all rows has begun about how many losses make a disaster.
My approach will be to look at the share of the vote the government gets - will it be worse than the 26% they got in 2004? Worse than the 25% John Major's Tories got in 1995? But those stats highlight a problem with nights like this - Labour went on to win a general election after that 26%, the Tories went on to be slaughtered.
We'll look too at the number of councillors who lose their seats. There's no science in this but two hundred is not a bad psychological benchmark. Tony Blair's pain steadily increases the higher over that figure his losses go.
With over 100 key wards now declared, the BBC calculates the change in the parties' share of the vote so far as follows:
CON +3
LAB -1
LIB DEM -2
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