He was the centre of attention and Ken Livingstone was determined to put on a good show. Barely three hours after Tony Blair's worst nightmare came true, Ken was basking in the glory of victory, all the rough and tumble of the mayoral election campaign forgotten. He hardly stopped for breath as he hit the ground running as London's first directly elected mayor.
He strolled into his first press conference at Romney House, the temporary home of the new Greater London Authority, and offered olive branches and history lessons to the Labour Party machine licking its wounds a few hundred yards away at Millbank Tower.
Just as Winston Churchill said there should be magnanimity in victory, Ken promised to work with Tony. But co-operation is a two-way street and in Ken Livingstone's London that meant Downing Street would have to swallow the bitter pill and work with him.
In fact, Ken admitted he was already working through a huge pile of documents on his desk . . . "A sorry letter from the Prime Minister, probably," one photographer wagered.
But no, his first job next week would be meeting the Trade and Industry Secretary, Mr Stephen Byers, to discuss the difficulties at the Ford car plant in Dagenham. Groans from the photographer.
The question on everyone's lips was whether the prodigal son would return to the Labour family fold. And from the new mayor the answer was tantalisingly close to Prince Andrew's hint earlier in the week that he would not rule out remarriage to Fergie.
Without the trace of a smile or a barbed caveat, he said that his intention was "to heal this wound, not deepen it" and he would invite all the political parties to work with him in the assembly.
Ken's London would see the end of the "sterile politics of Westminster. It seems to me with an assembly of 25 members, the idea of four party whips, four party caucuses, four rules of discipline is frankly nonsense."
But as one BBC commentator noted, Margaret Thatcher also spoke about working to unite the Conservative Party when she was elected and she turned out to be a rather more aggressive leader than expected.
Outside Romney House, London was experiencing some welcome relief from weeks of grey skies and rain. The sunshine and cloudless blue skies seemed to augur brighter days for the capital, according to some of Ken's aides, who were quaffing champagne on the banks of the River Thames.
Tony Blair probably wouldn't have agreed with them. Taking time out from the peace negotiations in Northern Ireland, the Prime Minister insisted his personal views about Ken Livingstone hadn't changed, but he insisted that wasn't the point.
"The people of London have made their verdict clear and it's my responsibility to make sure it works for London," he declared.
In London, however, it was all about Ken. Clearly revelling in the hoopla surrounding him, offering one journalist the award for asking "the bleeding obvious question", he was also ready to bare his teeth.
Ken had travelled into town on the Tube earlier in the day and it had broken down and he was not about to let anyone forget about it.
He would fight the government if it pressed ahead with the planned part-privatisation of the Tube. And in a reference to his description as a Cuddly Ken-type politician, he promised that criminals in London would find the new mayor "distinctly uncuddly".
The election war had ended earlier in the day when the candidates lined up on the stage at the Queen Elizabeth Conference Centre to listen to the inevitable. As the returning officer announced the result, a great cheer rose up from the crowd and a tearful Ken struggled through his victory speech, thanking Londoners and offering a few words of comfort for his old pal, Frank Dobson, who had "borne a terrible brunt of odium which was not his . . ."
For his part, Mr Dobson, the Labour candidate that Londoners never wanted, admitted he was "deeply disappointed". But he was a Labour man to the last: "I believe the message was right but we found it difficult to get the message across. So as the principal messenger, I must accept my full share of the responsibility for that failure."
But it was too late to win any votes now.
The Conservative candidate, Mr Steven Norris, was in typically bolshie form. He came in second with just over 27 per cent of first-preference votes to Ken Livingstone's 43 per cent and he was in a damn good mood.
His performance was "pretty terrific", he said, but he gave little away about whether he would accept any offer of the deputy mayor's job. He liked Ken, but they disagreed politically. He wouldn't mind giving Ken a bit of advice if he needed it.
As with the Ken Livingstone of old, it looks like a case of watch this space.