THE annual round of local elections seems to put East Lancashire on the map and this year it was Pendle's turn.

There we were, cheering our heads off on almost every BBC news bulletin on Friday! Pendle had certainly gone Liberal Democrat with a thump.

But why did the broadcasters choose Pendle? Last year it was Burnley in the limelight for the less welcome reason that the BNP had won seven seats. This year Burnley was sidelined: the BNP had flopped and they were no longer top news. By Friday afternoon the national story was the scale of the Labour defeats.

The media were desperately looking for cabinet ministers who would talk to their cameras and Jack Straw was brave enough to turn up to the count in Blackburn. In the event Labour did better there and held on, though the loss of council leader Sir Bill Taylor helped to create a "story" and Blackburn joined Pendle on the national news.

So why Pendle? It's simple, really. The media was expecting Labour losses and Liberal Democrat and Tory gains. But many councils would not get their results out until well into the small hours. Many more were not counting the votes until the next day.

TV needed footage of early gains by both opposition parties. It needed places where those gains were fairly certain and where the counting would be done quickly. So for once in a while TV descended on the count at Colne Leisure Centre, where returning officer Stephen Barnes and elections officer Gillian Hartley and her team delivered the goods.

There's another plus for East Lancashire. It seems that Pendle, Burnley and Blackburn have topped the North West league for the percentage "turnout" of voters. Whitefield ward in Nelson may have had the highest of any ward in the country.

With just over half the registered voters turning out in this area (or rather staying at home and posting off their papers, or in some cases giving them to someone else to fill in) the government will claim a great success for the all-postal voting.

But the number voting in these elections is up all over the country, not just in the all-postal regions.