BBC Sports Personality of the Year 2012: live 19.36 16,000 people inside the irritatingly typeset ExCeL this evening, says Barker. Does anyone know if it's booze-free? Things are surely going to get tremendously rowdy in the next few hours if not. 19.35 That's the first montage of the evening over. The hosts are coming out. It's Barker, Lineker, Balding and John McCririck! I did not see that coming! I am only joking 19.33 A singer! ...and it what must surely be a postmodern nod to Twitterlolz it's Emeli Sande, her off of multiple appearances at the closing and opening ceremonies. She's singing her song Read All About It and informing us we're all "wonderful, wonderful people." I am going out on a limb and saying that I'm not as wonderful as Bradley Wiggins. Here she is wandering past the FA Cup: 19.30 Right, this looks like actually being it. Lineker, Balding and Barker are in a helicopter. #necessary. 19.28 Trumpets blaring, a foggy graphical representation of the Olympic Stadium.... This is it! Oh no, wait, it's a trailer for something called Ripper Street. 19.26 Here's your friend and mine Andy Holgate: The operative word is personality. Only one winner then from the list, Wiggo. He's the only one who has one. Alternatives with personalities? Balotelli, Poulter, Haye (showed his personality in the jungle) and that Udinese fan. 19.23 Now, I'm no fashion person, but I think we may be witnessing a trend this evening. Look: Here's Jessica Ennis: Ellie Simmonds: Cyclist Joanna Roswell: ...and Kate Rose the wife of Justin: Now, as I say, I am no fashion person. But it does look an awful lot like they're all wearing red dresses to me. You heard it here first: invest in red! 19.15 Don't worry, everyone, the ever-charming Joey Barton has had his say: 19.10 Here's Stephen Hurry with the first vote for alternative SPOTY 2012: Lance Armstrong? Or is that just a little bit too alternative? 19.05 With things just hotting up (if you really, really like watching well-dressed sports people all repeat variations on a theme) BBC's red button coverage has abrubtly finished! For the next 25 minutes, at least. I'm getting by on an audio montage here. This is a disaster. 19.00 Competitive dancing's Louis Smith is looking suitably spiffy, and possibly lost on his way to a pop-up eatery in Dalston: 18.55 Jim White admits that he's questioned the relevance of this award in the past, but not tonight: This year the award reflects the grandest four seasons of sporting action any of us can remember. Tonight's BBC show will allow us pause to recall exactly what we have seen, to remind us what a time we have had of it these past 12 months, to make us appreciate that yes, it did really happen. 18.50 Who had 10 to seven for the first sighting of the Mobot? Well done, you win the Cava: 18.38 Lord Coe, who will be winning tonight's lifetime achievement award, has arrived and said some words: I'm very flattered. There are some giants of sport on that trophy. I'm also very lucky, to be able to still be doing something in my fifties. I know when I wake up every that sport is going to shape my day. It's frightening thought that it's been a decade preparing for the Olympics. I had 14 or 15 very good years in track and field, so I'm privileged to still be in sport given that my competitive career ended so long ago. When we were bidding in Singapore we were very clear that we wanted great competitors to inspire a generation of young competitors. It's an almost impossible choice tonight. 18.34 Haha, excellent work from Nicola Adams, who sheepishly says "better take my chewing gum out," before removing it and talking to the Beeb's mic-wielder. She's wearing Miu Miu shoes, fashion fans. Paul Kelso reckons tonight should be the end of enjoying 2012: 18.31 Adlington, Pendleton, other people whose names end with "ton." They're all here! The Katherine Grainger crying clip count, for those of you keeping track at home, is already at two. 18.26 Here's Ian Poulter, one of the most unlucky sportspeople to miss out on the shortlist this year after his almost bizarre Ryder Cup heroics. Here's hoping he's got a Team of the Year award to share his bed with tonight, at least: 18.23 Jess Ennis, Katherine Grainger, and Ellie Simmonds have also done their stint at talking into a microphone. All very nice, all saying much the same as Mo. Apropos of nothing, here is a spotter's guide to the evening that I dun wrote: THE SLIGHTED LOSER "Just to be nominated is a huge honour." Thus spoke someone other than Bradley Wiggins who's secretly livid that their career-defining moment had to take place in the greatest year of sport ever. THE MEDIA NOVICE Rusty since the attention of the Olympics, look out for unreconstructed opinions, nervousness betrayed by mad, darting eyes and a refreshing lack of bland clichés. THE POST-CAREER "CHARACTER" Desperately keen to show they can do "banter" as they're pining for a retirement spent hob-nobbing with Sue Barker on Question of Sport or, God forbid, James Corden on A League of Their Own. THE SHEEPISH FORMER WINNER Invited by default due to their success in a fallow year, but have no place in such esteemed company. THE EMOTIVE MONTAGE AKA the only prism through which past sport can now be viewed. THE FOOTBALLER A rare breed these days at any event saluting excellence in British sport - and quite right, too - but look out for Wayne Rooney having a crafty ciggie in the background. THE LIVE TELEVISION SLIP-UP Of course sports people are all terribly well-behaved, but then lots of them are terribly fond of swearing in their spare time. THE BLOOPERS REEL A quaint irrelevance in this day and age, in which anything accidentally amusing has been uploaded to YouTube 14 times 30 seconds after it has happened. 18.18 Mo Farah's on the red carpet and doing some talking: It's been an incredible year, with the Olympics in London and to do what we did. We had a fantastic year and I'm looking forward to tonight. All 12 nominees, if you had to pick any other year, any of them would have been the winner. In somewhat more exciting news, Mo's daughter Rihanna says she is most excited to see Tom Daley, but she's too shy to ask him for an autograph. 18.10 How do you feel about red carpet pictures? You may be seeing rather a lot of them in the next hour and a half, as the Red Button build-up on the Beeb's red button is not providing the newsworthy content I had anticipated. Bradley Wiggins has arrived, and now appears to have completed his transformation into Paul Weller: I'm somwhat surprised that the world didn't implode when this happened: 18.00 Evening liveblog fans. I must confess that I'm not a traditional fan of the Sports Personality of the Year show. I struggle with pomp, let alone ceremony, and the sad reality is that British sport has rarely been glorious enough to merit the reverance with which nights like this treat it. Not so in 2012, a year so ridiculously full of fantastic memories that if I started listing them now I'd finish some time midway through Q2 2014. There is no reasonable reason not to enjoy tonight's events with Auntie Beeb, because it's essentially going to be four or so hours of tremendous memories. I don't know about you, but I could totally watch a whole load of well-edited highlights from the Olympics, Tour de France and Ryder Cup. That sounds like a treat. This evening I hope you'll join me in illustrating your favourite sporting moment of the year. Here's mine: It represents football, a sport that will be, correctly, more or less absent from tonight's proceedings. I feel a bit sorry for football. It was genuinely the most exciting end of a season ever and it's been overshadowed by roughly 800 more worthy moments of glory from hitherto overlooked sports like sailing, cycling and even golf. Who's ever heard of "golf"?! Build up, speculation and mild sarcasm to follow.