My week: Emily Maitlis

Tracey Temple, John Prescott's paramour, is not the only one betrayed by her nocturnal murmurings. Mark, my husband, thinks I'm having an affair with a man called Brent whose name, apparently, I cry out in the middle of the night.

I am too embarrassed to admit to him that Brent is just one of 32 London boroughs that has been occupying my waking - and it seems sleeping - hours ahead of our marathon BBC1 programme for the local elections.

'What's Brent like?' Mark finally asks sulkily, pushing peas around his plate with a fork. 'Like?' I muse, warming to my task. 'Well, Labour majority of 35, three vacant seats - high-profile initiatives on safer stations will probably keep it out of Tory hands...'

Mark is aghast. He is clearly trying to decide whether he'd prefer to be married to an adulteress or someone so crushingly dull her night-time fantasies involve No Overall Control.

He is, however, relieved to have found someone who spends more on make-up than his wife. That someone is Michael Howard, who notched up the tidy bill of £3,500 during the last election campaign. On BBC News 24, I interview Ann Widdecombe. She rails against the waste and the way image has become paramount to politicians. A bit rich, I remark, coming from the very one who coined the phrase 'something of the night' about Howard, and subsequently went blonde herself. But the woman responsible for a whole industry of vampire jokes - the van Helsing of Westminster in many ways - is having none of it.

'That's not what I meant and you know it, madam,' says Ms Widdecombe. She has a way with words.

Invited to host the Blush Ball for Breast Cancer Haven with the Countess of Wessex. They ask if I would like to arrive by pink, open-top, 1952 Cadillac. As it turns out, the Cadillac collects me from the back door of the Natural History Museum, where we've been doing a sound check, and drops me at, er, the front door of the Natural History Museum. I am handed elderflower cordial when I arrive. I wonder how they know I'm pregnant.

I am dying to ask the countess what she bought her mother-in-law for her birthday. Was it the inevitable baby-photo-embossed handbag like the rest of us? Did she opt for vouchers ('always safe')? Did she pop the receipt into the carrier bag and say: 'Honestly, change it if you fancy; I won't be offended.'

The end of the evening brings a floorshow by Dita von Teese. Not, as they say, her real name. Dita calls the act 'burlesque cabaret'. Everyone else calls it striptease. She starts off in a glittering basque and a skirt of white feathers that would have the good people of Cellardyke reaching for the Defra emergency hotline. She ends the dance in nipple tassels and a sequined thong. Relief I left mine at home. Nothing more mortifying than turning up in the same outfit.

I have decided to embrace the new green strategy as exemplified by the Conservatives. I have worked out I can quite happily jog the distance to work as long as I hail a cab first and leave my high heels on the back seat. In the interest of furthering the green cause, I have put a call in to David Cameron to ask if he wants to do a shoe car pool on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays. Surely they wouldn't mind sharing a back seat? Mine are neat, pointed and well-behaved. The red ones always wear a seatbelt and never get sick.

I have also stuck some Guatemalan pan pipes to our satellite dish to convince people it is a wind turbine. It is far more subtle than the ordinary kind and I sincerely believe if you stand underneath it, you can feel a gnostic sort of energy coming through. Just need Mark to siphon it off to the washing machine.

I am being given a masterclass in 'Commentary for Big Occasions'. I watch pictures of the Queen emerging, a vision in red, on her 80th birthday. No obvious baby-photo handbag from daughter-in-law Sophie. All I can think of is the beginning of Have I Got News for You, where Merton and Hislop pull apart the story of the week.

But I bite my tongue and launch into a reverential and melodious flow about boy scouts, brass bands and birthday cards. I put down the microphone beaming. But the smile is soon wiped off my face.

'It's not a funeral, Emily. Perhaps, erm, try to sound a fraction less grumpy?' suggests the brilliant producer as tactfully as he can.

Election morning. Friday is becoming very familiar. It is still Friday. It has been Friday for far too long. It feels as if Friday started circa 1970. For the election results, David Dimbleby is in the Millbank studio and I am stationed in a city pub called the Counting House. The one place, ironically, in the whole of London where no counting is taking place.

We have a cast of thousands and brilliant panellists - Michael Portillo, Rod Liddle, Oona King, Trevor Phillips, John Kampfner, Janet Daley - an entire series' worth of Question Time regulars. Plus assorted voters. What the BBC likes to call 'real people'. None of your pretend sort here, thank you very much.

London, we keep hearing, will be 'the Big Story of the Night'. Suddenly, it is, though not quite in the way we expect. Millbank has a major power failure and the main studio, with Dimbleby, Vine et al, cuts out. After a hasty hunt for cameras and loquacious guests, we are thrown on air and told to fill indefinitely. Instead of slick on-air graphics, we have the blue Biro scrawl of the floor manager as he runs across the room to hand me results.

Instead of Jeremy's illuminated map of the country, we have a couple of pencil drawings by LSE analyst Tony Travers. I think he has handed me a sweet picture of a horse until he turns it round and shows me the psephological pattern he is trying to impart.

The chat goes on for 15 minutes. It turns to half an hour. An hour and a half later, we are still going quite happily. The important thing is that those guests, I'll warrant, will never, ever complain about not being given enough air time again.

The Maitlis CV

The Life

Born in Canada to British parents in 1972; family returned home and settled in Sheffield. Studied English at Cambridge. Married to Mark, a banker; one child and, now, another on the way.

The Work

Lived in Hong Kong for six years, where she got her broadcast break as a business reporter for NBC. Presented local news on BBC London; now presents Newsnight and BBC News 24.