TORY Dominic Grieve had a coy smile on his face for the most of the night running up to the elections.

And it was no surprise when his smile grew into a distinctive wide grin as the results for the BEACONSFIELD constituency were read out and his 13,116 majority was confirmed.

He was not the only one who had something to smile about as Labour candidate, Stephen Lathrope, leapt into second place, ahead of the traditional Liberal Democrat second runners, represented by Stephen Lloyd who put on a brave face.

The only one left was Andrew Moffat, the UKIP candidate, who won just 1,626, which would not have even won him back his deposit.

In AYLESBURY, Conservative David Lidington was obviously experienced in general election counts.

While the other parliamentary candidates were sitting around from midnight, Mr Lidington only arrived from his Princes Risborough home at 3.30am.

The actual count of votes started at 3am as ballot papers from the general, county council and Aylesbury Town Council elections had to be sorted out.

It was not until just before 5am that the results were announced with Mr Lidington receiving 47 per cent of the vote, nearly three per cent up from 1997.

Peter Jones, the Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate, was disappointed with his 13,221. He wanted to have made inroads into Mr Lidington's majority. and stretch his lead over the Labour candidate Keith White, who polled 11,388 votes.

Justin Harper, of UKIP, was eventually satisfied with his 1,248, though had wanted 3,000 earlier on in the evening.

The biggest winner was apathy with turn-out a low 61.7 per cent.

Tory Cheryl Gillan said she was "always quietly confident", hours before she was re-elected as MP for CHESHAM AND AMERSHAM with another large majority. Mrs Gillan cruised to victory polling 22,867 votes, giving her a majority of almost 12,000. She saw off both Liberal Democrat John Ford (10,985) and Labour's Ken Hulme (8,497) despite suffering a slight drop in her 1997 result of 26,298 votes.

After the count Ken Hulme said Labour had made its mark on the constituency.