For a “people’s forum” littered with angst over anti-social behaviour, police crackdowns and binge drinking, there was perhaps no greater venue than Melbourne’s Burvale Hotel, the storied site for all-of-the-above over the past 30 years.

While “the Bur” been been sledged by Liberal upper house veteran Bruce Atkinson for erecting a massive Dan Murphy’s to replace the bottle shop, and pokiewatch.org for fleecing punters out of $60 million in the four years to 2009, last night it was Melbourne’s Rooty Hill, the mythical heartland where John Brumby and Ted Baillieu would be forced to meet their makers in front of 200 swinging voters.

The cavernous shrine to plasma, located in a twilight zone somewhere between Vermont South, Burwood and Nunawading, is open from 9 to 5, but on closer inspection, that was 9am to 5am, leaving just four hours for low-paid cleaners to mop up the previous night’s misery.

But all that was forgotten as Crikey arrived at the Brewbar, closed “for a private function” and adorned with glinting Herald Sun bunting, to witness John Blackman holding court as the night’s hype man.

Blackman strongly hinted that Hey Hey It’s Saturday would return next year, saying Daryl was keen to re-embrace the spotlight because he “was down to his last $40 million”. Other zingers included something about Daryl breeding with cattle and the perils of psychopathic twins.

Intrepid Herald Sun transport reporter Ashley Gardiner was ferreting around for questioners, but strangely many of the audience, who were paid $50 for their trouble, seemed content to sit and watch the drama unfold. Or maybe it was just the stultifying heat, which prompted both leaders to remove their jackets and slurp repeatedly from pots of water, a privilege denied to everyone else.

Over 130 tortuous minutes, we had Kim from Glen Waverley demand action on euthanasia (twice), Ari from Caulfield on dentists, Maxwell on scratched train windows, Jess from Preston on dodgy cab drivers and Maria on “oozed and boozed” youngsters who, conveniently for the Burvale, were mostly John Brumby’s fault.

Baillieu won the toss and decided to bat the questions away first in a wooden, measured performance that failed to raise hackles until people started yelling about myki. Ted didn’t to commit to pensioner Jeff’s demands for a new dam, making the point that Brumby had already locked Victoria in to hundreds of thousands of new gigamegas from the desal plant, his loping, heat-affected response (“we’re going to examine the contract”, “we’re going to consider that in the future”), sending the swingers into a coma.

With elastic rivers of drool dangling tantalisingly, the lack of refreshments led to several of those head-drooping, wake-in-fright moments you often see on trains.

After a 10-minute interval, Brumby was on the laugh track early, responding to Crikey‘s demands for more jokes, with a classic Mick Young public meeting anecdote from the early 1980s. “Can you hear me at the back of the room?” Young said, to which an audience member replied that yes, he could hear, but he would rather be somewhere where he couldn’t.

As the Premier’s hour wore on, the local bird population weirdly infiltrated Sky’s speakers like World Cup vuvuzelas, prompting an on-air apology to Sky’s 5000 viewers from host David Speers.

Despite the gags, Brumby was mostly in defensive mode, repeatedly referring to the “1990s” as the root cause of the state’s problems. But just as the rumbling dissent threatened to explode, John Hewson-style over something like power bills, the premier would disarm the tension with a silky smooth personal anecdote.

And he had a fan in News Limited associate editor Andrew Bolt. For most of the night Bolt was perched stage left, presiding over his flock in a Chesterfield armchair, re-emerging at the interval with a considered assessment and a la fin to declare Brumby the winner.

In the aftermath, media-savvy ALP state secretary Nick Reece emerged to press the flesh for at least 15 minutes with Herald and Weekly Times chief Phil Gardner, Brumby chief-of-staff Dan O’Brien and Galaxy Research impresario David Briggs, who had selected the undecideds through his polling firm.

Ebullient organiser Genevieve Brammall said News accomplices had been in touch to tell her that “the signage looked way better than Rooty Hill” and that the “media savvy” organisers at the Burvale had swung into action as soon as she called.

It was then over to the well-carpeted Springwoods Room for the prestigious after-party, where, for the first and possibly last time, Crikey got to sup long and deep from Rupert’s teat in the form of free schooners and Big Ted hit the mobile to rake over the coals.

All the leading News lights were there, with Nick Leys and Stephen McMahon trading anecdotes with Fairfax’s Farrah Tomazin and David Rood, who was on a high after being shunted a nice scoop the day before on Labor’s attack strategy in the inner north.

Over lukewarm spring rolls, Gardner, chuffed at the return of real democracy to Victoria, told Crikey he was surprised at the lack of questions over the influence of the Greens, which his paper has allocated at least two front pages to since the beginning of the campaign.

But by then, it was nearly 10pm, the next day’s stories had been filed and the verdict was in. Thirty-seven per cent for Baillieu, 31% for Brumby and 32% still yet-to-decide who they will grudgingly give their vote to on November 27.